


Flashover (A Mockingverse/Flash Crossover)

by MsMockingbird



Series: The Mockingverse [23]
Category: Mockingbird (Marvel) - Fandom, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 17:45:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 24,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8905522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsMockingbird/pseuds/MsMockingbird
Summary: A freak accident punches Mockingbird of the Avengers into the universe of the Flash and strands her there. How does Team Flash deal with someone who's been a superhero much longer, under much harsher conditions?





	1. I think I'm In Love

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure where this lies on the Mockingverse timeline. Sometime between "Winter's Widow" and "The Trial of the Winter Soldier" I think.
> 
> *Aug 3, 2017 -- have placed this into the Mockingverse as canon.* 
> 
> Inspired by Chichirinoda and Miko's wonderful work on this site, especially "A Week On Rogue's Mountain".

Barry Allen flashed back into the basement of Star Labs with a blond woman in his arms. She was dressed in a black body suit with a white stripe down the center, shimmering oddly. Her long hair, golden, flowed over the Flash's shoulder and half way down his back. 

"Uh, guys?" Barry yelled, his voice panicky. "I need a little help here." 

Harry, Joe and Iris sprinted into the holding area in time to see Barry lay the woman down on the concrete floor. Her head lolled to the side and they saw she had a huge bruise down the side of her face, extending under the collar of her trench coat. 

"Whoa," Joe muttered, his hand on his side arm. "She is armed to the teeth guys. I'm counting at least four holsters and that's just what I can see." 

"Barry, said Iris, "what did you do?" 

"I mighta sorta...kidnapped someone." 

***** 

Caitlin Snow examined the woman as best she could, given the shock her body suit had delivered to Iris when they tried to get it off her. She was sitting at the conference table in the next room, still half dazed. "Barry, what happened?" she asked in a worried voice. "These bruises go down to the bone, you're lucky you didn't break her neck." 

Barry was standing still in the doorway of the medical bay, vibrating slightly in distress, in his Flash suit with his cowl down. "I was on my way back she just...appeared...in the middle of the speed force. I got this fleeting impression of some other people and she slammed into me...or I slammed into her and I grabbed her to keep her from spinning away and then I was here. Is she going to be all right?" 

"There is some wicked advanced tech in that suit and her coat, hell in her boots," piped up Cisco. "Like, crazy advanced. Compression modules built in to stop blood loss I guess. Fireproof, got internal heating. Layer of something that looks like Kevlar and diamond had a love child. And that white stripe is armored and covering something I can't even read other than 'micro-cybernetics'." 

"Harry, do you know her? She's dressed like a meta-human or one of Arrow's crew but she's not in any database," Cisco asked. 

Harry Wells shook his head. "No. She looks a little like Black Canary--yours and mine--with the hair and the batons but no, never seen her before." 

"Argus maybe?" Barry said, turning to join Cisco at the main computer. "I mean with that kind of tech..." 

From behind him in the medical bay, a woman's voice rose in a surprisingly deep roar: "Quicksilver! You better hope daddy is near by or I'm going to rip you limb from limb, speed or no speed, you fucking scumbag!" 

And the mystery woman stomped into the main room, shedding Caitlin with a shrug. Standing she was incredibly impressive, almost as tall as Barry and built like a professional fighter. She exuded the same kind of lethal menace that Oliver Queen did. Joe reflexively whipped out his gun and pointed it at her. She sneered at him and addressed the room in general. 

"Where is he? Where's Quick--" she paused and focused on Barry and his suit. He'd flashed his cowl back up before she came out of the room. "No. It was you, bloodstain. You're the one who hit me." Her eyes scanned the room. "A new speedster? Great." She rolled in her eyes in perfect disdain. "So who do you all work for? AIM? Hydra? A radical splinter faction of the Hamilton touring show?" 

Cisco burst out laughing and then covered his mouth. 

For just a moment the woman's lips quirked into a smile and the ghost of a different person was there, full of humor. 

"You are pretty obviously not professionals if the King of the Beat Cops over there is your armed response. Star Labs?" She inclined her head at the visible logo on some of the equipment. "I've never seen or heard of you so let's just get into what exactly you thought you were accomplishing by kidnapping an Avenger?" 

"A what?" asked Iris in a blurry voice. 

"An...Avenger?" the woman said slowly. "Captain America? Iron Man? The Hulk? Thor? Black Widow? Falcon? Hawkeye? Earth's Mightiest Heroes?" With each name's lack of recognition her expression grew more dismayed. "Is this some sort of cult? Or did you all wake up under the same rock?" 

"Um, you might want to sit down Ms.?" Barry interjected tentatively. 

"Mockingbird," she supplied sourly, not moving. 

"Well, Ms. Mockingbird, I'm not sure how to explain this..." 

***** 

Bobbi put her head down on the table, then yelped and sat up straight. "Forgot about the bruises. Wow. Bruce'll be ripped up he isn't here. The Many Worlds Theory is true. Shit." 

It was a much more relaxed gathering at the conference table now, littered with the remnants of a Big Belly Burger trip. It had taken the Flash Team about an hour and a fair amount of news footage to convinced Bobbi--as they were now calling her--of what had apparently happened. In turn she'd explained who she was to them. Somehow she had been in close enough proximity to the speed force in her universe to have been literally punched out of it by Barry accidently. Once she'd been sure Flash was a hero she willingly took off her tactical suit and let Caitlin examine her. The left side of her body was one extended bruise but the impact dispersal cells in her suit had prevented any real damage. Now she was dressed in clothing Barry had flashed out to buy, casual tshirt and jeans. 

"Do you remember how you got wherever you were?" Joe asked her. "I mean, that might help us to get you back there." _And away from my kids_ was the subtext. 

Barry, Cisco, Caitlin and Iris were all acting like Bobbi was an old friend. Joe and Harry were more aloof, both of them suspicious and more than a little rankled by her assessment of them as 'obviously not professionals'. That she'd pegged Joe as a cop in one look seemed to act against her to him: that was something criminals did. When he'd tried to dance around that idea she'd laughed and responded that she was a member of a very polite and helpful street gang after all. 

Her brow crinkled. "Well, I think you all might have an issue with my explanation. You have the saying 'Any sufficiently advance science--'" 

"Is indistinguishable from magic," Barry and Cisco finished together. 

"Well, any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science where I'm from. We--the Avengers--have a demi-god in the roster after all." She smiled that happy, friendly smile again and it was insanely hard not to trust her when she did that. "Asgard asked for our help and we went as a group. Someone--my money's on Loki, the little shit--was going to set off a sort of magical bomb that would 'crack the Bifrost'. Basically prevent anyone from using their transport method to get from Asgard to Midgard and back. We found the bomb--with the help of Sif and the Valkyries--and contained it. But we were all in the room when it went off. It didn't hurt any of us but I think it pushed everyone out of alignment with the dimension for a millisecond. And in that millisecond Barry creamed me right out of my plane of existence." 

Barry winced. She leaned over and patted him on the hand. "S'okay sport. Not your fault. These things just happen to people like us. I got attacked by a man-eating carnivorous plant once and a cybernetically enhanced wolf saved me." 

"I think I'm in love," Cisco breathed. 

"Married," she laughed at him. "Look, thanks for the food but if there's any chance you could...vibrate me back to my dimension I'd like to slather myself in analgesic and have Hawkeye rub my back till I fall asleep, okay?" 

Barry sighed and stood up. He'd practically been sitting at her feet in worship, listening to her stories of a world where being a superhuman was almost common place, something that made both Joe and Harry very worried. Cisco got up too. 

"It'll be easier on Barry if I can 'vibe' your home dimension before you leave," he said. "What do you have on you that's super personal?" 

She considered for a moment then pulled one of her batons out of her thigh holster. "This was custom made for me by Tony Stark, in Avengers Tower. I've carried it into battle hundreds of times. It's made from alloy smelted in the basement of my home." 

"Perfect," Cisco said and grabbed the metal cylinder in his bare hand. His eyes unfocussed for a second and then he nodded. He reached out and took hold of Barry’s arm, who in turn took hold of Bobbi. She tucked the bundle of her tactical suit under her other arm.

“Nice meeting you all,” she smiled genially around the room. 

Cisco walked over and pulled on his Vibe gauntlet then walked back to Barry and Bobbi. 

“Let’s do this,” he said.

Barry took both their hands, Cisco with the baton clutched in his other fist. 

The Flash smiled at the strange blond woman who’d erupted into their lives and started to vibrate, faster and faster until he blurred against the background. Cisco raised his gauntlet.

It exploded. 

Cisco was throw into the wall, collapsing in a heap, screaming.

Barry and Bobbi stood together in the centre of a maelstrom of light and energy, nothing but a blur of energy and motion. 

Then they were both slammed into opposite walls. 

Bobbi sat up, gasping, clutching at her pockets. Barry staggered to his feet as Iris and Joe raced to his side. Harry and Caitlin did the same for Cisco.

Before anyone from Team Flash could recover, Bobbi staggered over to the main computer and drunkenly hooked her phone up to the central computer.

“Jarvis, play flashed message,” she gasped at the rudimentary AI in her phone. 

A 3D hologram of a red and gold suit of armour appeared, hovering above the display. 

“Bifrost compromised. Unsafe. Stay put. We’ll be in touch. Little bird.” 

“What does that mean?” gasped Iris, staring at Mockingbird.

“And who the hell was that?” Yelled Cisco.

“Iron Man. Tony Stark, the world’s greatest engineer. My friend. To answer your question, Cisco. Otherwise, I’d say it means that I’m going to be your house guest awhile longer,” Bobbi said quietly, rising to her feet, her face remote and cold. “If the Bifrost is unstable, I’m stuck here.”

“Are you sure that was him?” Snapped Joe.

Bobbi nodded. “Yeah. ‘Little Bird’ is Clint’s pet name for me. No one uses it but him, on pain of arrows. That was Tony’s way of telling me to trust the info.” She sat down in her chair with a thump. “I’m sorry guys. I can’t leave.”


	2. How are you people not dead?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mockingbird is amazed at how different the worlds of the Avengers and the Flash appear to be.

Mockingbird shook off Caitlin’s attempts to examine her. “Look after Cisco. I just need a minute with the chemistry set, okay?” 

Barry plunked down next to her at the desk, watching Caitlin examine Cisco and Harry examine the remnants of Cisco’s gauntlet. He glanced idly at what she was doing, then back again with more intent. Iris and Joe were watching them all from the table, talking in low voices.

“You know your way around a lab,” he said eventually. 

The blond woman looked up from her mixing and testing and nodded. “I have two doctorates, Biochemistry and Chemistry.” She tapped at a test tube, looked at the open computer screen and back at Barry. “And a Masters in Military History but that was just so I could needle Steve about being the ‘military expert’ on the team.”

With calm precision she filled a syringe with the mixture she’d just made and injected it into her left arm. 

Barry sat up. “Uh, what are you doing?”

She smiled at him, then gestured at the bruises visible on her face. “Taking care of these.” She put the syringe down on the tray. “It’s a custom mix. Anticoagulants, anti-inflammatories and something I want to call a ‘necrotic hemozyme’ but Bruce keeps threatening to beat me up when ever I say it.”

Caitlyn looked up. “‘Necrotic hemozyme? An enzyme that…eats dead blood cells?”

“Yeah! See, I told him it made sense but he starts going on about proper nomenclature and I just wanna run screaming from the room…anyway, sport, its a thing I made up for us humans on the team. We can’t afford to look beat up, it makes us look weak. This’ll clear the bruises up in a day or two. Any underlying injury still exists but at least I’ll look good when I’m vomiting blood.”

Barry stared at her, stricken. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize I’d hit you that hard! I—”

“Barry! Barry chill! I’m sorry, sport, that was an inside joke. I’m not hurt right now but I have a distressing tendency to take injuries that have me coughing crimson,” Bobbi pulled up the edge of her shirt to show two perfectly parallel scars on her abdomen. Even in that brief flash the exquisite toning of her body was very apparent. “I got stabbed through the torso by a mind-controlled friend a while back. The cuts were so sharp and so fine they never really healed 100%. Since then I’m prone to internal bleeding. That’s why we added the extra impact dispersal cells to my tac suit.”

“Your world sounds…dangerous,” remarked Iris, walking over to rest her hand on Barry’s shoulder.

“Yeah, Ms. West. I think that’s a fair assessment. Just from talking to you all I think my world’s…hmmm…not tougher but harsher? Maybe? Yeah, harsher than yours. We’ve had heros longer so we’ve got more villains too.

“That explains your tech, too, right?” Supplied Cisco, sitting up and rubbing his hand. Other than some scraping he seemed okay. “I mean, you’ve got stuff just in that outfit of yours that we couldn’t even imagine.”

“Yup,” Mockingbird nodded. “Desperation breeds innovation. Though I’m carrying some proprietary inventions too. Experimental.”

“Like whatever’s under that white stripe?” Cisco said suspiciously.

“Exactly,” Mockingbird replied, then grinned at him. He stared at her and she stared back, her smiled fading into a thin line. For the second time since she’d woken up Team Flash could see the warrior under the woman. Cisco broke first.

“Well, I guess we should clean up the work room,” he said briskly and left the medical bay, followed by the others.

Half way across the room an anguished cry sounded from behind them. 

“How are you people not dead?” Mockingbird said, clutching her hair in both hands. “You just all walked away from a total stranger with _demonstrable_ scientific skills, standing in your medical bay with an open connection to your computer system live on the desk. How—in all that is holy—has someone not murdered you in your sleep!”

Barry looked at Joe, sharing a soul-deep wince. 

The strange blond woman continued. “And don’t say it’s because you trust me! I’m a black ops wet work infiltration specialist! They called me Mockingbird because I can become anyone and anything needed to get to my target! Everyone trusts me when they meet me! Even the people I had to kill!”

“You killed people?” Joe said slowly, his hand on his fire arm again.

“Yes, Detective West, when I worked for the shadowy extra-governmental agency that used to employee me I assassinated people. I haven’t done it for a long time but it’s like riding a bike you know, you never really forget how.” She stared at them all, what seemed like genuine distress on her face. “Your world is very different from mine and I’d like to keep it that way and now I’m scared that my being here might bring you guys some trouble and I want to go home.”

Abruptly Mockingbird folded down onto her knees in the middle of the floor. “I want to go home. I want Clint and Natasha and Bucky on my couch throwing popcorn at me. I want Steve resting his hand on my shoulder while I’m working on something in the lab. I want Tony and Bruce and Sam and I playing speed Risk and Thor drinking a beer and laughing at us. I want to go home before some vile asshole from my world shows up and blows a hole in this pretty place and all you nice, gentle people.”

She was crying now, racking sobs that shook her whole body. “Sorry, sorry,” she snuffled, rubbing her face with her arm. “I think I have an allergic reaction to inter-dimensional travel. I get all weepy the first day I’m in Asgard too.”

Barry flashed to her side and knelt in front of her. “We’ll make sure you get home, Bobbi, I promise. We’ll get you back to your family.”

She smiled at him, through long lashes thick with tears. “Thanks, Barry. Maybe I should get some sleep right now.”

“Of course,” he said, helping her up. “You can come home with—”

“ _Oh My Fucking God I Am Not Going Home With You._ Seriously, how are you not dead? You’re going to lock me in the Pipeline with a blanket and a book, without my suit, my weapons or my tech. You’re going to set your security system to watch over me,” she snapped at him, disgusted. 

“Um, okay, sure,” Barry said. 

When he and Cisco came back into the Cortex after locking Mockingbird away at her own request Joe looked over that them both.

“I’m starting to like her,” the detective rumbled. 

*****

The next day, after work in the crime lab, Barry ran over to Star Labs to check on their visitor. He found her still in her cell in the Pipeline, staring at the ceiling.

“They tried to let me out a few hours ago, Cisco and Caitlin. I made them relock the door until you were in the building. I’m thinking I need to run you all a ‘basic safety and security’ briefing before I leave. Lesson one: don’t let the stranger from the other dimension wander around the place without the one person who might be able to take her out in the building.” 

“Might? Pretty sure I could put you right back in here before you could do anything,” Barry said lightly.

She turned her head and looked at him. Three long beats later she smiled. It wasn’t an amused expression. “Well, that’s a thought.” Bobbi sat up and ran her fingers through her hair. It fell sleek and straight down her back but her face was grimy and pale at the same time. She looked like she needed a shower and food.

“Wow, that stuff really did work on the bruises!” Barry exclaimed. Other than a lingering darkness at the corner of her eye, her skin was clear.

“Yeah. Told you, we can’t afford to look banged up in an extended fight. Gives the impression we’re mortal, weak.”

“But you are…mortal I mean. Not weak!” Barry sputtered.

Bobbi eyed him with something like displeasure. “You aren’t real, are you? I mean, drop the ‘adorable puppy’ act. You’re cute as a button and you bounce around like a little kid but if you wear a suit and fight super-human bad guys you can’t be this…”

“Naive? Innocent? Trusting?” Harry Wells supplied from behind Barry, who turned to glare at him. 

In truth, hurt had opened up in him at her words, the naked disdain in her tone.

“Nice,” Bobbi finished. “I’m not used to ‘nice’ being applicable to my colleagues and my self. Tough, mean, difficult, temperamental, loyal even. But nice is just…weird.”

“Well, maybe you should try it once in a while,” Barry snapped, standing up. 

“Hey,” she stood up with him, holding her hands out in a placating manner. “Hey, I’m sorry, that was…a total dick move on my part. I’m still wrapping my head around how different our circumstances are and my natural state is ‘sarcastic asshole’.” She rubbed at her face. “My personal history needs trigger warnings for every thing from sexual assault to torture to emotional abuse. To see someone, a hero, like you, so bright and alive and joyful….you’re making me remember what it felt like when I started out in this world.” She sat down again with a thump, covering her face with her hands. “I’d sorta like that feeling back,” she said, her words muffled.

“I’m not sure we can help you with that, Ms. Barton. But I think we can provide a shower and dinner,” Harry said, releasing the door lock. “Barry, are you joining us for the food?”

Barry looked at the blond woman as she raised her head, eyes red and puffy. He smiled and held out his hand. “I think I have to stay, right? Bad security otherwise?”

She laughed and placed her hand in his, her grip firm and powerful despite having smaller hands than he did. “You learn fast, Mr. Allen.”

“I do everything fast,” he laughed. “I’m the Flash.”


	3. Is like everyone from your world supermodel gorgeous?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mockingbird talks about her life as an Avenger.
> 
> A shopping trip.
> 
> A Wild Pair Of Rogues Appear!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, for anyone interested in my Mockingbird's backstory it's all available here on this lovely site, referenced in my series "The Mockingverse". 
> 
> Currently organized chronologically, beginning with "Mockingbird: The Wilderness Years".
> 
> This cross over likely occurs between "Winter's Widow" and "Trial Of the Winter Solider" -- still ongoing.

"Do you people eat nothing but burgers and pizza?" Bobbi said in a mild voice as she took her seat at the conference table. "I mean this is really nice looking pizza but um...I can't afford the calories." She smiled gently at Barry. "I'm an aging unenhanced human woman. This body takes hours of work to just maintain. Cheese and deli meat isn't...a dietary aid."

Caitlin looked stricken. "I should have thought of that. I'm so sorry."

"No, s'okay. I mean, thank you for feeding me at all! But if I'm here much longer--and we have to assume a few days at least--maybe someone could source me some salads and vegan lentil stew? Or better yet, let me earn some pocket money and go shopping. I can cook."

Barry cocked his head at her, then at Harry. He narrowed his eyes at the older man. Joe and Iris weren't there, both of them still at work. "Tomorrow I'll take you shopping. I'm on my weekend--"

"Ah! Shift work," Bobbi laughed. "When you say things like 'well, it's my Friday!'." 

Harry made a tsking noise in his throat then subsided, obviously disapproving but recognizing that Stubborn!Barry! had made an appearance. 

Cisco leaned forward. "So, okay, you've got abs like the Scarlet Speedster here and I know it's not from having powers. How much do you work out?"

Bobbi took a single slice of the olive and jalapeño pizza and took a huge bite out of it. "Well, combat burns a lot of calories, you know? But few hours a day usually, when we're not travelling. Some of it's not what I think of as 'working out'. I mean, my team mates and I will spar for hours for fun."

Harry blinked at her. "You mentioned your world's had heros longer than this one. How long have you been doing this?"

Bobbi put her pizza down on her plate. "Fighting? Since I was eleven, Doctor Wells. Well, ten really, if you count the conditioning training I did on my own. But at the age of eleven I learned no one was going to defend me, unless I defended myself." She smiled and took another bite of food. "Sounds bleak right? I was left in a boarding school in the Philippines--you have the Philippines here?--by my very ambitious oil executive parents at eight years old. After that I hardly ever saw them, spent my vacations rattling around the school. I was smart and awkward and mouthy and by some bloody miracle when the phys ed teacher got caught touching little boys he was quietly replaced by a local guy who turned out to be an eskrima guru. And he followed the old tradition of the word 'warrior' being gender neutral. By the time I was fourteen none of his students in or out of the school could stand and trade with me. By the time I was sixteen, I could take my teacher out in under a minute."

She stood up almost convulsively, an animal energy on her. "My parents died in a plane crash when I was eighteen, I moved back to the States, got both my doctorates in four years. Acquired a finance...who betrayed me. Socially, politically, emotionally, physically. But out of it I got recruited by Shield, which is when Mockingbird was born. The middle part of my life is messy and complicated--"

"Because that beginning was so straight forward!" exclaimed Caitlin. 

Bobbi laughed. "I now, right? But that's the life, long convoluted back stories are de rigeur. The end result is a few years ago, when my whole life had devolved into an endless series of bad choices I met this guy. This infuriating, exasperating, brave, funny, smart guy. And for thirty six hours he and I avoided getting killed together by a whole bunch of very bad people. Then he asked me to marry him."

She walked over to the pile of her clothing and pulled out her phone. She placed it on the table where everyone could see it and tapped at it a few times. An image appeared, of a man holding a bow at full draw, his face still and closed. In this moment of concentration he looked hard and cold, but powerful, his bare arms sleek with heavy muscle. He was wearing a black tactical suit with a red-purple design on the chest, bearing the same "A" logo that her tac suit had.

Barry, who had some experience facing off against archers leaned forward.

"What's the draw on that bow? No casters."

"Hundred thirty," she said her voice rich with pride. She swiped the picture away and a new one appeared. It was the same man, sitting at a picnic table on a pool deck, shirtless, leaning back on his forearms with his eyes closed. Sunlight washed over him, making his skin and sandy blond hair glow. HIs body was perfect, every muscle sharply defined and sculpted against long limbs. A red haired woman in a black bikini was about to pour a bucket of ice water on him, the liquid in mid-stream. 

Another picture, of him at a kitchen counter. He had a knife and a cutting board in front of him, looking up into the camera with a surprised and joyful smile. His face was wide and snub-nosed, his mouth small but curved upwards. 

Barry, Caitlin and Harry all sighed a little. The expression on the man's face was pure, unadulterated love.

"He's looking at you there, isn't he?" Cisco asked.

"Yeah," Bobbi said, her voice low and soft and sweet. "Hawkeye. Clint Barton. My joy, my heart's--and other body part's--delight. He was already an Avenger when we met. Already saved the world. And he brought me into the fold, when he married me. Gave me a righteous purpose, a home. All those little things I've never had before. Honor. Integrity. Love."

One more picture, of a group of beautiful people mostly in bathing suits on that same pool deck. The skyline of a big city rose behind them. Bobbi was sitting on Clint's shoulders. Next to her the red headed prankster sat on the shoulders of a man with long dark hair and what looked like a metal arm. Flanking them was a tall blond man with the most perfect chest possible, hefting a second blond woman, her rich dark eyes shining in the sun.

The front row was centered by a man whom even sitting seemed to loom, huge and regal looking. A slim dark-haired woman sat next to him, her hand on his arm. Two dark haired men, one with a neat beard and the other in an open short sleeved shirt were looking at each other to one side, grinning slyly. A strawberry blond woman in an elegant pant suit was rolling her eyes at them. Two black men sat on the other side, both wiry and strong looking, though the older man was shorter. They both looked like soldiers. 

Bobbi gestured to each person, starting with the front row. "Bruce Banner. Tony Stark. Pepper Potts. Jane Foster. Thor. James Rhodes. Sam Wilson. Clint and I. Natasha Romanoff, my bestest girlfriend. Bucky Barnes. Sharon Carter. And Steve Rogers. Captain America. Team leader, the first Avenger, my brother in all but blood." She smiled into the air, her lashes wet again. "This is what Clint gave me, from nothing. From the ashes of my life and my hopes, from the lowest most desperate moments of my existence. A family. We've been married almost seven years now. As far as I'm concerned that's the moment I became a hero. Everything before that was just...limbering up."

She grinned, ducking her head shyly, and tucked the phone back into her pocket. "No biggie, right?" 

Caitlin was crying, a few slow tears working down her face. Harry looked sad and distracted. Barry was staring hungrily, like he wanted to grab the phone from her and look at that picture forever. 

Cisco was eyeing her with a calculating air. "Is like _everyone_ from your world supermodel gorgeous? Cause I'm moving in with you if so."

Bobbi laughed, high and clear and sweet. Again, a different woman strobed over top the serious cold-eyed warrior she mostly presented: merry, kind, cheerful. "Steve and Bucky have both been artificially enhanced, Natasha was tortured into perfection, Thor's not human, Tony's super rich and it's easy to be in good shape when you're a billionaire, Pepper's his business partner/girlfriend _natch_ , Bruce and Jane are ascetic scientist-monks, Rhodey, Sam and Sharon are soldiers, still, and Clint and I are just obsessive about it. So, no, but yeah, as a group--easy on the eyes. Though, Ramon, come on." She gestured at the people at the table, then the world in general. "Everyone I've seen in this place has been on the cute-to-drool-worthy spectrum. You're not hurting for eye candy."

"It not the same," he muttered.

"True. I've been asked about a billion-ty times by asshole reporters why I'm not into Steve, since he's so amazing. And it just squicks me out. Like, that's my _brother_ you're talking about, you pervs. Clint though? Clint in a hazmat suit in a pitch black room? I'm looking around for a place to throw my clothes."

*****

The next afternoon Barry took Bobbi to The Marketplace, a huge indoor collection of food stalls and specialty food retailers in the heart of downtown Central City. Every few paces she gave a cry of delight and fell on some esoteric vegetable or oddly shaped fruit, pre-made sheets of dough, dried spices and herbs, thick cuts of pork and chicken, bones still attached. 

"You're sure it's okay? I hate spending your money on this, it's not fair," she asked him repeatedly. 

"It's fine, as long as you promise to let me have some stuff once you've cooked it. I don't spend a lot--fast food is cheap--and I'm not paying rent at home," he told her. He felt incredibly relaxed around her, since last night. Hearing her life story, seeing those pictures, had cemented his already pretty strong instincts that she was a good person. 

"Oh most of this is for you, I doubt you're eating enough," she said, eyeing a selection of mangoes like they were her enemy.

"I'm eating 8000 calories a day," he laughed.

"Hmmmph." She looked him up and down. "Not an ounce of body fat on you, sport. Should be 10 000 easy I'd say. Same problem I get with Steve and Bucky, no one told any of you idiots what kind of fuel you need--you went hypoglycemic when this all started, right? They're maintaining a lean muscle mass that's obscene and you're fuelling fast twitch muscles that eat energy like oxidation eats metal," she clucked at him.

He got a warm fuzzy feeling in his stomach at the almost maternal tone in her voice.

Because he was being good they sat down and had a second lunch when they were done shopping, cloth bags heavy with things that smelled wonderful tucked into the back seat of Joe's car which Barry had 'borrowed'. She picked at a small plate of soba noodles with squid and he ate a huge bowl of rice and chicken in sticky sweet-hot sauce that she ordered for him.

"Thank you for this, Barry," she smiled at him. "The shopping and the quiet time. I wasn't kidding I get weepy and weird over dimensional shifts. I really needed to spend time with a...colleague. Hard to relax with anyone else."

Barry felt himself start to beam with pride and managed to modulate it to a friendly nod. He opened his mouth to say something else...

...and was interrupted by the sound of screaming two streets over. 

They both jumped to their feet, the remnants of the meal forgotten. Bobbi cocked her head. "That's...what's that noise under the shouting? It's artificial--and there's two different...that's nearly a flamethrower. What's the other one?"

"It's a cold gun," Barry said, his stomach hitting his feet. "It's Captain Cold and Heatwave. I think they're robbing a bank."


	4. You two are just a-dor-able

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain Cold and Heatwave vs The Flash and Mockingbird
> 
> Mick might be enjoying all this a little too much.

Barry jittered in place, slightly frantic. All his instincts as the Flash and a CSI said _get out there a stop them!_ and the rest of him was looking at Bobbi and...

...she was smiling at him. A big, friendly _utterly insincere_ smile.

"You go. Take care of it. I'll wait here," she said. "Maybe leave me the car keys."

With his eyes closed he believed her. She sounded calm and resigned. 

With his eyes open? He glared at her. "You're not even going to pretend you didn't bring your gear, are you? I mean, how? I was with you the whole time!"

She just cocked her head at him and narrowed her eyes. "You should go. You might be late. Leave the keys." 

He dropped the keys on the table, because if he didn't she'd just jimmy the lock, and was gone in a flash. 

*****

Leonard Snart pointed his cold gun at the manager, listening to Mick rant and roar in the middle of the room behind him, pacing around the briefcase Snart had placed in the center of the room. Always very motivating, having the homicidal arsonist out of control nearby. That was why Mick did it.

"Sooooo," Snart drawled. "Your time is up in fourteen seconds. Open the deposit room. " He hit the 'overcharge' control on the gun, letting the internal whine of the coolant system build up into the intolerable range.

The manager, a tall black woman with an admirably frigid manner, frowned at him, looked over his shoulder at Mick and then turned and snatched a set of keys and a swipe card from her desk.

And in a flash of red was gone. 

Captain Cold jumped backwards into the open space at the center of the room, where he had a clearer shot.

A red and orange blur swirled around the room and within seconds, the bank was empty of staff and customers. Just he and Mick, back to back, in the middle of the round marble rotunda.

The Flash skidded to a halt in front of the doors to the bank, lithe and lean, a cheetah in red leather. He was still absurdly young to Snart's eyes and ridiculously fit.

"Snart. Rory. Give it up," he called in that clear youthful voice, so achingly determined to sound tough. He was doing better than he used to, that was for sure. 

"You're _early_ Flash," Snart said with disdain. "Nothing to give up yet." He was almost twenty seconds early, he must have been out on the town. 

"I guess I'll just have to take you in empty handed then," the scarlet speedster said and pushed his back foot into the marble.

Snart stepped sideways as Mick kicked briefcase in the Flash's direction, scraping across the floor. The lid sprang open as it spun, revealing a complicated mass of something that glowed with a light similar to Snart's gun. Captain Cold and Heatwave both fired at the Flash at the same time, aiming to each side of him so when he _flashed_ forward he went right over the briefcase.

Then he was falling, tumbling and skidding to a stop, wrapped in a sticky web of fibres that glowed blue-white. He yelled as he hit the floor, shaking and shivering, unable to move. He gasped in pain, staring up at the Rogues with fear in his big puppy eyes.

Snart stalked over to him and pointed the cold gun. "Freeze net. A new acquaintance made it for me." The whine of the gun charging up was loud, even under the sound of Mick laughing.

A...shimmer...in the air at the bank door suddenly turned into a woman. Tall, blond hair pulled into a pony tail. Dark blue-black body suit over a powerful frame with a white stripe down the middle, long trench coat. Blood running bright from her nose and a pair of shining metal batons in her hands, twirling. 

"Sport, pick on someone your own size," she called and flung her hands out to the sides. The batons snapped out of her grip like living creatures and Snart found himself tracking one of them with his eyes. It hit a marble column, rang off a metal barrier on the teller's window, rebounded off the bottom of the mezzanine and took the heat gun right out of Mick's hands, sending it catapulting across the room, behind the teller's windows on the other side. The big man roared in pain, spinning and shaking his hand.

Then the other baton hit Snart's right arm sideways, the pain sharp and clear and his own weapon went flying. When he looked up from cursing, the damn woman had retrieved her weapons on the planned rebounds and was stalking towards them, grinning. 

"Who the hell are you, lady?" Snart snapped squaring up to her, stepping between her and his prize, still writhing on the ground.

"Hello. My name is Mockingbird," she said in a terrible fake-Spanish accent. "You have netted my friend. Prepare to die! Or, well, get all bruised anyway," she finished in a normal voice. She stopped and squinted at them. "Oh, come on guys that was funny. Or don't you have 'The Princess Bride' here?"

"Quit joking around, skirt," snarled Rory, stomping forward. 

"Why not? I mean thermal gimmick tech villains? You two are just a-dor-able," she said sweetly. "You should hang out with Spiderman's guys."

Captain Cold narrowed his eyes. He could not bear being made fun of. In lock step, he and Heatwave charged her, planning a good old fashioned beat down.

She...danced...past them, spinning in a swirl of her coat, going to her left around Mick. Her batons tapped out, Snart saw them move, almost floating. Fast and smooth looked slow, he'd learned years ago, and calm conveyed mastery. This woman--Mockingbird--was so calm she was laughing and she was indisputably a master stick fighter. Mick took hits to the thigh, the side and the shoulder, each placed with precision. Even in that snapshot, as he turned to track her, Snart recognized she could have killed or crippled Heatwave and chose not to. Then she was past them and Mick was down on one knee, roaring with pain. Snart looked at his partner, looked at the Flash (still struggling with the web) and looked at the woman. 

Hero. This was a new hero, one he'd never heard of. One that could out fight nearly anyone he'd ever seen. Therefore, outside of his calculations. Therefore--

He made a diving run across the room towards his cold gun, tracking the woman as he did so.

Heatwave surged to his feet and stampeded at the woman, arms out like a bear, mad with rage. She flipped her batons into thigh holsters--contempt, pure contempt--and opened her own arms in mockery.

Snart vaulted the teller desk, spotted his gun under a chair and snatched it up. Thumbing the controls brought no comforting whine--broken damn it. He turned back to see Mick Rory and the blond--Mockingbird she'd called herself--trading blows like an MMA fight in the middle of the space.

Captain Cold vaulted the teller window again and when he landed just stopped and stared for far longer than he really wanted to. 

It was beautiful violence, Heatwave and this insouciant hero fighting hand to hand. She was composed and graceful, ducking and shedding the big man's artless hammer blows, darting in to land snapping blows to his joints, solid kicks to his body and legs. Mick looked powerful, throwing punches that wouldn't have shamed a heavy weight fighter. As he gained control of his firey rage he pulled himself together, started to land a few strikes. One to the face that sent her staggering away with blood on her mouth. She laughed, touching the split lip, and raised her hand to Heatwave in respect. 

Then she unleashed on him and Snart saw she'd been holding back before. 

Mick looked like a punching bag as she shoulder rolled across the space between them to rise up like Venus on her shell between his arms, inside his striking radius. Smart, so smart. She flurried blows to his solar plexus, his gut, hands moving in a blur. Twice she skipped out and clocked him in the face, the second blow audibly breaking his nose. His hands flew up to his face, blood pouring down to his elbows. Mockingbird stepped back and swept his legs out from under him. 

Snart was moving by then, retrieving the heat gun and lining up his next move, the police had to be here by now, out the back door, the back up get away car was two blocks north, this whole thing was a wash...

On his back on the marble floor, blood on his battered face, Mick Rory looked up at Mockingbird.

"Marry me," he growled.

She burst out laughing. "I think that's still bigamy, even in another universe." She unshipped her batons and raised them above him. 

"Mockingbird!" Snart yelled. She turned and looked at him. He had pulled out a mundane gun, dragged the still gasping and frozen Flash to his feet. The gun was pointed at the young speedster's head. "Let Mick up and us out the back door or I'll drop the Flash right now. You're going to need to get him medical treatment PDQ anyway. This net is designed to mess up his nervous system. Could be permanent for all I know."

She spent a long moment considering him, then spun her batons back into her holsters, stepping away from Heatwave. He lumbered to his feet and took Flash's other arm. They made an odd parade to the back door, the two villains walking backwards dragging the Flash, the woman stalking them like a shark. At the back door Snart flung the Flash at her and the Rogues were gone, empty handed but for their weapons. 

*****

Bobbi caught Barry and laid him down, her hands burning with cold where they touched his bonds. He was shaking and sobbing, unable to speak. She extended on of her baton's blades and unceremoniously slashed at the glowing web, which parted like butter, losing its glow. The Flash's bare skin on his hands and face was stripped with blue-black, like he had frost bite. His whole body was cramping with pain and cold, making him feel like his own muscles were trying to tear him apart.

"M-m-m-m-mmmmm sorry," he whimpered. "Never...had...anything...like...that...before." She was gathering the strands of the web into one of her pockets

"Yeah, I'm not surprised. I think I might not be the only thing that crossed over into this dimension. This looks like...it looks like stolen tech from...." She hauled him up and kicked the back door open herself. "Let's get you home and healed up."

At the end of the alley Barry could see a swarm of police officers...and on the other side and down the street Joe's car.

"I am not in the mood to talk right now," he heard Mockingbird mutter. "Duck your head down, will you?" She shifted her grip on him and pulled an arm out of her trench coat, then draped it over his head. "This is going to look and feel weird, it might give you a headache. Just keep up with me and keep quiet."

Then she activated something on her suit and the world around Barry..shivered. "What?"

"It's called camo-tech. We are effectively invisible for a few minutes. Just make it to the car where you can lie down and I'll take care of the rest."

They made it to the car without incident and Barry curled up in the back seat, shaking. He looked up at Bobbi and saw her nose was bleeding again, joining the dried blood on her chin. "Are...you...okay?" he mumbled.

"Side effects, I'll explain back at Star labs," she leaned in, pulling the trench coat over him, hiding his Flash suit. "You just rest." She shut his door, got into the driver's side and started the car.

Barry lay on his side, nearly crying with the pain, slightly comforted by the smell of the groceries nestled on the floor where she'd moved them/

_What the ever loving heck just happened?_


	5. Poor self-preservation boundaries a must

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobbi cooks dinner and explains the Asgardian worldview, not necessarily in that order.

Mockingbird carried The Flash into the medical bay at Star Labs like he was a child, cradled in her arms. Caitlin—in full doctor mode—directed her to lay him down on a bed and took over stripping off the top of his suit. Mockingbird went away and Doctor Morse stepped up, helping to administer painkillers and analgesic gel, giving advice.

“Treat it like extreme frostbite. You have warming packs?” At Caitlin’s nod she snatched several from a drawer, snapped them in half and began laying them on Barry’s skin, over the discolored areas. Almost immediately he sighed and relaxed, visibly in less pain.

Harry and Cisco stood in the corner, arguing about what had happened.

“It must be some modification of the cold gun, something one of the other Rogues came up with. Hartley Rathaway maybe,” Cisco exclainmed.

“It’s not,” Bobbi said, looking up. She went over to her jacket and extracted the remains of the ‘cold net’ and tossed it down on one of the examining tables. 

“It’s from your world?” questioned Harry Wells, sharp as a tack. He poked at the net with a screwdriver, spreading it out on the table top. Deactivated it looked like a yarn net but woven deep in each strand something gleamed blackly.

“No,” she shook her head and went back to helping administer to Barry, who was still yelping in pain whenever they poked at the discolored areas. When he was stable, his skin starting to scab over and regain its color she stalked over to the see-through scratch board in the corner, pulled it out and grabbed a dry marker pen.

“You have Norse Mythology here, I checked,” she said, looking at them lined up next to Barry’s bed, staring at her. She sketched a rough shape of a tree with nine branches. “To the Asgardians, we are in Midgard.” She wrote that next to one of the branches. “They perceive the universe as branches off of ‘Yggdrasil the World Tree’. The Nine Realms. The Bifrost is seen as a manifestation of the trunk of the World Tree. It’s a metaphor.”

She scribbled in a series of words above the other seven branches (Muspelheim, Alfheim, Vanaheim, Jotunheim, Niflheim, Svartalfheim, Nidavellir) , then wrote “Asgard” over the middle one.

“Don’t ask me to explain this next bit. I’m parroting Stark, Banner, Foster and Thor here, Jim I’m a bio-chemist not a physicist. The Bifrost appears to be a ‘stable quantum tunneling polyphasic wormhole’ which allows travel between these ‘Nine Realms’. Coming here, I think that the Asgardian’s perceive _all_ Midgards as the same and they sometimes get flipped over to a different one than they are expecting. They’ve accidentally visited most of them, including you, but the majority of their time is spent in my home Midgard.”

“Earth 616 we’re calling it,” Cisco said.

“Copy,” she pointed the marker at him. “Well, this realm—” and she circled Muspelheim”—is inhabited by creatures the Asgardians refer to as ‘fire demons’. Yes, Cisco, I just said that out loud. That net is something the Valkyrie use to capture them when they venture out of their home dimension. I know because I’m technically a Valkyrie and they let me into their armory when we visit. It’s a fiber weave of particles in a state of vacuum energy. It’s not actually ‘cold’ it’s more that it achieves absolute entropy when touched and active. It ripped the thermodynamic energy out of Barry’s molecules, forcing them into a state of randomness. It’s super short lived but it must have been indescribably painful and I just wanted to get it off you, Barry. Cold was yammering out of his ass in there, he had no idea what it would do. The goggles I wear have biometric sensors in them; his heart rate was higher during that speech than during the robbery part. He was lying."

She set down the marker and ran her hand over her face. “The implications of that technology being here aren’t great, boys and girls. I think maybe Barry running into me wasn’t actually an accident.”

“Well, one way or another, you’re certainly giving our world quite a show,” called Joe West from the doorway, flanked by Iris. To their credit they both went over and spoke to Barry, making sure he was okay, before explaining. Iris brandished her tablet and showed the Central City Picture News website. Running in a loop on the home page was surveillance footage of the interior of the bank, showing Mockingbird appearing out of no where. “Mystery Hero Saves The Flash” the banner screamed. 

“What the hell _is_ that thing in your suit, anyway?” Cisco exclaimed.

“Camotech you called it,” Barry said.

“Yeah,” she said with a nod and then…vanished. She reappeared next to Barry, blood running from her nose. “We use smaller scale versions of it to change our faces but this is a full body suit. The only one ever built.”

“Why? It’s amazing!” Exclaimed Caitlin.

“Because seventy five percent of the people who put it on died screaming in agony,” Mockingbird responded. She wiped at the blood on her face with her sleeve. “I can use it to look like other people if I need to—that’s a huge energy drain but otherwise fine for some reason." And there were two Barrys now, one standing next to the other on the gurney. Then Mockingbird was back. "I can do that to the max length of the battery charge, about thirty minutes right now. Invisibility though? That’s got a twelve minute hard return on it.”

“What happens then?” Iris asked.

“I started having seizures, but I can still walk, talk, move around for about a minute or two. At seventeen minutes, simulations indicate brain death would occur.” She smiled sheepishly at the looks on all their faces. “I was the first person to wear it. They got cocky after that and three people died. The suit fell to me by default. We’ve been monkeying with it over the years, it’s safer than it was when I first got it. Seven minutes back then.”

“Why the hell would you ever wear that thing again?” Snapped Joe.

Mockingbird spread her hands in the air. “Because it helps me be an Avenger, Detective. Innocent people are alive today because of it, including the heir to the throne of Great Britain.”

Joe West looked at her and she saw his eyes snap to Barry once, behind the Flash's back. She smiled, sadly, nodding. “Well, it’s part of the CV: Superhero…be willing to suffer to protect others. Poor self-preservation boundaries a must.”

"You don't wear a mask," Iris said softly. "How do you keep your family safe?"

"I don't have anyone but the team, Iris," Mockingbird said, hopping up to sit on one of the other gurneys. "I have Clint and Steve and Nat, I have the guys...and they can all take care of themselves. We don't have pets...other than the ducks, and that's Steve's fault. We don't have connections to people who go unprotected. Clint and I aren't making any baby Bartons. We make a big production of that, for the cameras, because people always ask. One of the things we agreed upon as a group, years ago, was to try and make being a superhero look as unpleasant as possible for people. Discourage wannabes. We talk up the bad stuff, the constant working out, the paranoia, the never feeling safe. Though Clint and I never wanted kids we pretend it's a big sacrifice, a huge failing. We're realists. In my world, I'm not going to die in bed. I'm going to go out in battle or as a captive to my enemies, in agony, terrified that my death will cost the lives of those I love. I know for a fact Clint will probably kill himself if I go out first; I was ready to do that the time I thought he was really dead." She shook her head again. "I might have been a weepy mess when I said it earlier but I'm truly concerned that one of my villains will find all of you. Daken or Wilson Fisk or Bullseye would go through you like paper; no seriously. And with that net...one of them already has."

Joe moved over to stand next to Iris and Barry, the poppa bear instinctively protecting his young. "So you coming here wasn't an accident at all?"

"No. I think I was...a fishing lure? The hook without the bait, anyway. I think whatever, whomever is here needed to be dragged into this world and set us--the Avengers--up to help. I would suspect, if it's one of Surtur's minions or a rogue Asgardian that they 'picked' me because they think of unenhanced humans as basically pets anyway. But I've got an Odinmark, I'm spiritually connected to Asgard as a Valkyrie so they can access aspects of my...personal energy I guess? I think it'll be an Asgardian. Which pisses me off." She cocked her head, lips moving. "It plays, on all the levels. The initial need for us was crafted, a situation the Valkyrie couldn't deal with. The 'bomb' that pushed us out of alignment with the plane of existence. The disruption in the Bifrost. The cozying up to Flash's rogue's gallery. That's meant as a distraction."

"So, what's the plan, man?" asked Cisco.

"I don't know. I can't see that part. There are four potential plotters. Loki, who I mentioned before. Amora, Karnilla, Hela, all would have different agendas. Without knowing who I'm not sure why; if I knew why I'd know who. Normally this is where I bounce ideas off Steve and Nat or go and have sex with Clint. Shake things loose." She looked up. "Right now? Barry needs food and we have a car full of groceries. You got a kitchen in this joint?"

*****

In short order, Bobbi was ensconced in the break room full kitchen with pans, bowls, peanut oil and knives, chopping with neat precision at vegetables and fruit. The rest of them, including Barry--much improved already--sat at one of the long tables. Barry was chewing on one of his tasteless protein bars and looking longingly at the pile of food being assembled on the chopping boards. They could smell cooking oil heating up, garlic, ginger, onions. 

"Bear, you sure about her? I mean she shows up spouting this stuff about gods and demons, she's got tech like we've never seen--" Joe said in an undertone.

"She kicked the shit out of Heatwave bare-handed," breathed Cisco.

Barry listlessly dropped the gnawed bar onto the table top. "Sure? No, Joe, since Dr. Wells and Captain Cold I'm not sure about anyone. But she's been so damned...open and honest about everything, including that we shouldn't trust her. I suppose that could be some sort of...what...long con? But I don't think so. Joe, you saw her fight. She's said a few things that make me think she's fought speedsters before. She's not afraid of us; of me. If she's got some devious plan I don't think we'll be able to deal with it until she springs her trap anyway. Might as well have a nice dinner first."

"Joe, you didn't see her talking about her...family. Her team. Those pictures of her husband," said Caitlin in her sweet, gentle voice. "If she's a good enough actor to fake the emotion she was showing we'd never know it."

"Barry? You feeling well enough to come and cut some of this stuff up for me?" Bobbi called from the chopping block. Barry popped up and hustled over, taking the knife. His hands _blurred_ and piles of neatly cubed ingredients were deposited in various bowls. Bobbi laughed and clapped her hands like a child. "Oh, come home with me and be my sous chef! Stark's rich, you'll live in luxury!"

He grinned at her.

"Okay everyone, I have lentil stew, steamed rice, a mango and green chili salad and the rest of this is for fried lumpia. Barry, looking at everything here what's your favorite flavors, mixed together?"

He pointed at a bunch of things and she swept half of each bowl into a bigger one, and started to mix it all together. "What's every one else like?" 

They all gathered around and at her direction assembled little piles of ingredients. She deftly started to place tablespoons of mixture into dough wrappers, rolling them into thin cylinders. After a few, most of the group grabbed their own and tried to copy her, to various levels of success. Barry's pile was twice as high as everyone else's and made with his superhuman deftness. Bobbi swept the finished plates over to the stove and flash-fried them in several pans. 

Cisco leaned over and tried to snag one freshly made and took a rap with a spoon. "No. No touchy Barry's. Needs his calories to heal. That plate's yours." Cisco snatched it up and hunched over like a dog protecting his bone, making little rapturous noises. One by one the group settled back at the long table, eating with silent concentration. Barry wolfed down half of his massive stack lumpia in a few minutes and then sat back, slowly working his way through the rest. He already looked normal again, his skin almost clear and his face flushed and happy. 

Bobbi sat quietly, listening to the friendly, homey conversation among the group. She picked at salad and lentils, drinking water laced with lime slices, her mood growing slowly more somber. 

"What's wrong?" Harry eventually asked her, his gruff voice not unfriendly for the first time.

"I hate the implications of all this. I hate the disrespect to me as an Avenger, the contempt to use me as a toy. I hate the idea that one--or more--of those four is targeting your world. I'd be most frightened by Hela or Loki being the bad guys. I hate that I can't figure out what they want." She shook her head. "But all I can think is if they want me here I need to leave...but I can't. Also, I won't if there's still a chance whomever caused this is still around. So, I'm just sorta sick that I'm even tangentially responsible for possibly hurting any of you."

"You won't hurt anyone if I have anything to say about it," snarled a man from the door way of the room.

Bobbi--who'd been sitting facing the door--looked up and smiled, like a hunting shark tasting blood in the water.

Framed in the doorway was a man in green leathers, a bow in his hand, and a domino mask on his face.

Flash jumped to his feet. "O--Green Arrow! What are you doing here?'.

Joe had also risen, moving to one side, his face set and cold as he looked at the Star City vigilante. 

Mockingbird--and somehow Bobbi was gone and Mockingbird stood there in her clothes--stood up very slowly. "Aw, someone sent me a gift. Hello, Oliver Queen."


	6. You don't even make henchman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay.
> 
> Mockingbird and Arrow fight. 
> 
> They are both in very bad moods...

Oliver Queen, still wearing his green hood and mask, glared at Barry.

“You told—”

“No, they didn’t. They just suck balls at security,” Mockingbird interrupted him. “I’ve been walking around this place for days with an unsecured AI fragment in my pocket. I know everything about everyone in this room, and Team Arrow—Jarvis has been feeding me intell from the surveillance cameras, the local news, social media, email, all of it. What kind of cars you drive, where you live. How you take your coffee. Everything.” She looked over at Joe, her eyes worried. “Seriously, Detective West, you need to get them on some sort of remedial security program. This lax bullshit is going to get someone killed.”

The Arrow snarled under his breath. “Fine. That doesn’t change why I’m here. Who are you? What are you doing here and why are you dressed up like a low-rent Black Canary?”

“Low rent? This tac suit cost sixty seven million bucks, sport!” Mockingbird said with a laugh that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Quit joking around,” the Arrow snapped.

“Okay,” Mockingbird responded, “Sure. The only joke in this room is you, anyway.”

Barry stepped up between them, his face a wash of emotions. Anger, concern, anxiety, confusion. “Hold it, both of you. What the hell is your mutual problem? Bobbi, the Arrow’s a friend. Arrow, Mockingbird just saved my life. Quit…quit _posturing_ at each other.”

Bobbi took a step back, the expression on her face softening. “Sorry, Barry. Super-heros on my world are like wolf packs. We clash over territory and methodology and everyone’s scrapped with everyone at least once.You expect this kind of thing in a new city. Try walking down the street in Hell’s Kitchen without Daredevil nagging at you.”

“I’m here, Barry, because I was watching the news and I saw you in trouble and then this woman I’ve never seen before, dressed like Laurel or Sara and fighting like a member to the assassins guild and I figured you were being set up for something. Still don’t think I’m wrong.” He eyed the blond with displeasure. 

“She’s from another universe, dude, place where heros are like…every where,” Supplied Cisco. “Barry knocked her out of the speed force by accident.”

“Accident? Sure,” the Arrow responded, his voice dripping contempt. “How hard did she work to make you believe that?”

“To be fair,” Caitlin said slowly, “You did just tell us, Bobbi, that maybe it wasn’t an accident?”

Bobbi shook her head. “It wasn’t an accident at all, I’m sure of it, but that just means I was set up too.”

“Sure,” the Arrow repeated, coldly. “You were set up by who?”

Bobbi made a frustrated noise. “I don’t know. It’s making me _nuts_. All I am is information and stick fighting.” She threw up her hands dramatically. But her eyes never left The Arrow and his never wavered off her. 

They were really like two predators, feeling each other out, tension and violence crackling in the air.

Harry and Joe had moved to stand next to Barry, while Cisco and Caitlin were hovering by the table still. Only Iris was still sitting, her beautiful face cold and remote as she watched the tableau before her. 

“What, exactly, did you want to accomplish here, Arrow?” Joe asked slowly. “We’re fine, I think. The lady really did save Barry’s life. Why are you here?” Detective West was not the Star City vigilante’s biggest fan.

“Yeah,” said Barry with a nod. “I appreciate you coming if thought we were in trouble but…we’re…not?” He finished on a tentative note, the palpable menace flowing between the other heroes giving him pause.

“That—” and Arrow pointed at Mockingbird with the tip of his bow—”is not what she appears to be. I’m not sure what she is but she’s dangerous, she just admitted she’s been gathering intell on all of us and she took down Snart and his partner like they were children.” He paced to one side, still staring.

Abruptly, Mockingbird laughed. “He’s scared,” she said in an idle, lazy tone. “I just figured it out. He saw me beat down Heatwave and he’s smart enough to see that I wasn’t really putting up much of an effort. Plus I clearly can do things no one around here can do—no powers, it’s tech by the way. The camo-suit alone is going to make someone like him twitchy. The only reason mine wasn’t outlawed by the security agencies back home is a combination of ignorance and my being the only person alive who can wear it.” 

She looked at Barry. “I do think he’s concerned about all of you—he’s a good friend in a prickly, defensive way—but he’s more concerned about something else, aren’t you?”

The Arrow just glared in silence. 

“Aw, come one, _Arrow_ you can admit it. You’ve been the big dog in this business for what, five years?” She pointed at Barry. “He’s literally the most powerful person on the planet, right, and he does what you say. Looks up to you, comes to you for advice. Everyone in your little crew, all capable of doing this on their own and they all dance attendance on you, trying to win daddy’s approval. Your little harem of women that you ‘let’ work with you, smarter than you are, tougher, more dedicated. You hand out just enough respect to keep them on the hook, while beating down their self-confidence when you get the shot at it, right?”

Every other face in the room mirrored Barry’s shock, confusion and denial save for Arrow’s cold rage and Iris’s quiet regard. 

“I’ve seen guys like you over and over on my world, good enough to know someone better will be along eventually. And that footage from the bank is just terrifying, isn’t it? The better man showed up and it was a _woman_.” Bobbi mocked. “You spent years and years training and you think that makes you some sort of guru ninja master? I’ve been doing this since I was eight, asshole. I’ve fought a _god_. I stopped an alien invasion of the planet _by myself_.”

She moved across the space between them in a blink, the only person who could have moved faster was Barry himself, both hands slamming into Arrow’s chest, knocking him back a step.

“As I said to another man—wiser, smarter and tougher than your candy ass—you want to compare dicks with me? Whip it _out_.”

*****

They reconvened outside, to the open area inside the construction fence. Mockingbird and the Arrow took either side of the plaza, both limbering up, never looking away from each other. Barry was pacing back and forth between then—well, _flashing_ back and forth—trying to get them to back down. 

It wasn’t working.

“This is exactly like high school,” Cisco said said to no one in particular. “I feel like I should have AP Science class in twenty minutes.”

“Should you be doing something about this, maybe, dad?” asked Iris to Joe.

“Consensual fight isn’t illegal. And I think if I tried to stop them…it wouldn’t take, you know?” Joe returned, his expression somewhere between wry and concerned. 

Caitlin shivered in the early evening air, her face anxious. Harry shrugged out of his jacket and gave it to her.

They could just hear Barry when he was talking to Arrow, his voice sharp with anger and worry.

“But why? Seriously, she’s not a villain, Arrow. You should see the pictures from her home planet, she’s part of this team of heros—”

“Repeating that isn’t going to make it true, Barry,” The Arrow said, his face remote, cold. He looked at the young speedster and shrugged. “This will be over fast enough and then—after you get her a doctor—you can lock her in your prison till she goes home, all right?” Without waiting for a reply, he called across to Mockingbird. “I’ll put the bow awa—”

“No, keep it. Use it. Won’t matter,” she interrupted him. “You done chatting? Can we do this?”

“I could kill you with this,” Arrow responded, sounding slightly…unhappy.

“If you think I’m a villain why would you care and if you think I’m not why are you doing this? Make up your mind!” She laughed at him and it wasn’t a nice sound.

Arrow snarled under his breath as she called out again to the little group huddled to one side. “It’s okay guys. I’ve done this before.”

Reluctantly, Barry stepped to one side, joining Iris and Joe. 

With no perceptible gathering or getting ready, the fight was on. 

With the air of ‘ending this fast’, Arrow drew and shot several bolts in quick succession directly at the blond woman opposite—who was suicidally running towards him.

She knocked the arrows out of the air with her batons like it was a parlor trick and there was for just a heartbeat a palpable sense of shock on the Arrow’s face.

Then she was on him and if she’d been moving fast while fighting Heatwave in the bank, now she looked like she had a direct tap on the Speed Force attached to her fists.

Arrow backed, actually backed, driven into a defensive posture. He dodged and parried, using his bow as a hand weapon…which she seemed both to expect and anticipate.

“Her husband’s an archer, didn’t she say?” Harry muttered to Caitlin. “I think he must fight with his bow like that too.”

Mockingbird did a spinning jumping kick that nearly took Arrow’s head off, pure mockery from the grin on her face as she landed.

He backed and backed again, opening space between them, his chest already heaving.

“Thirty plus years, Arrow. I had to do this to survive for thirty plus years. You think a few salmon ladders and alley skirmishes are going to match that?” She taunted him, all but dancing on the outside of his range. “You sweet summer child, you’ve had it so good, cock of the walk, king of the hill. Well, it’s a small hill and a short walk and I’m waiting at the end of it. Come one, sport. Fight.”

Mockingbird charged him again, moving like wind and smoke. Arrow dropped his bow, the distance weapon useless now, and joined her hand to hand. His jaw was set and tight under his domino mask.

She hit him over and over, hands and feet, taking almost no hits in exchange for a long time and all the while keeping up a stream of words, growing angrier and angrier. 

“I know you. I’ve known men like you my whole life, the ones who assume cause I’m blond I’m stupid. The ones who talked over me and tried to steal my research. Men like you who assumed I fucked my way into special ops, because I was obviously just T&A right? A nice pair of tits, a good blow-job, just decoration. Not a warrior.”

There was a complicated exchange that involved both of them using the other as leverage, hands straining against one another. Sheer body weight and brute power brought the Arrow into the dominate position—which Mockingbird promptly used again him, shrugging him off her as they fell backwards to the ground, her feet on his hips. He flew, spinning and tumbling, coming up onto one knee and one hand…with a knife in his other fist. 

“Fuck,” hissed Cisco. “This is getting bad.”

“Yeah, this is technically now an assault, Bear,” Joe snapped at his adopted son.

Mockingbird laughed out loud. “Aw, sweetums, you brought a knife to a stick fight.”

Her batons came out, spinning silver in her hands, a low sweet hum following them. She looked over at Team Flash. “I got this, guys.”

Weapons flashing they moved towards one another.

There was a series of clicking noises, metal on metal so fast and sharp it sounded nearly musical. Barry blurred himself, pulling enough of the speed force into his body that he could slow down the action.

Arrow was in a compact knife-fighter’s crouch, blade darting out and back like a frog’s tongue. Mockingbird was meeting the blade with her batons, blocking and shedding each blow as though she knew where he intended to strike next. 

In comparison to her drubbing of Heatwave she was clearly taking this fight much more seriously, her eyes narrowed in concentration as she swept and cleared the cutting edge and deadly point of the weapon away from her body. 

Arrow cut her, his first real successful strike, up over the back of the left hand, the blade skipping against the sleeve of her tactical suit. Over extended by the sudden abrupt stop of the weapon, he left his arm hanging a heartbeat to long. Mockingbird moved into him, close as a lover and tracked an elbow up the length of his arm, into his nose.

Barry let the world come back into real time as Arrow staggered back, blood streaming down his face. His normal calm, serious mask of an expression was gone. He looked enraged, demented. And when Mockingbird spoke again there was no humor in her tone any more, just a cold depthless contempt.

“You think you’re better than the rest of them, Arrow? You think you’ve got the skills? On my world, you clown, you don’t even make _henchman_. You’re the cannon fodder Hydra throws at us on the field, the night guard in the security booth at the front of the lab. We wouldn’t have you around as a _punching bag. You’d get hurt._.”

Arrow snarled and lunged at her, fast as thought. 

She went over him, batons suddenly turned into a staff, vaulting into the air like a bird. And when she landed and spun, a sword blade snapped out from the end of her staff.

As Arrow spun to face her, she slammed the blade down, through his boot and his instep, pinning his foot to the ground. Somehow, he stayed nearly silent, the only noise a horrified grunt. The pain seemed to paralyze him, though.

Mockingbird had him in a complicated choke hold a breath later, the knife dropping from his suddenly lifeless arm. She leaned in and snarled into his ear, the watchers unable to catch what she was saying. Her arms tightened on his throat, the crook of her elbow against his adam’s apple. His body started to go limp, twitching, his eyes rolling up

Her expression was pure murder. She wasn't going to let go.

“Barry!” yelled Iris. “Stop this! Stop her! Now!”

Lightening seared the air and Mockingbird was halfway across the parking lot, rolling and tumbling. She came to a stop and lay still, apparently unconscious from the Flash’s desperate strike. 

Caitlin, Joe and Harry rushed the Arrow, pulling out the blade and helping him into the building, towards the medical bay. Cisco and Barry, trailed by Iris, stalked over to Mockingbird, just rousing. 

She sat up and clutched her head, then looked at Barry. “Thank you,” she said, softly, before he could speak. "Thank you for stopping me."

Her words threw confusion into his furious expression. “What the hell was that?” Barry snarled at her.

“That, Flash, was the culmination of all my frustration, anger and fear about this situation being taken out on an innocent man. That was you seeing what I’m like without Steve and Clint and Nat to hose me down emotionally once in a while. That was a part of me that’s in here and I try to keep locked away, the part of me that isn’t very nice. That was me breaking the first fucking code of conduct for hero fights: never leave the opponent unable to do their job.” She looked sadly at the two men. “Lock me up again, Barry, Cisco. I’ll strip down to my skin, you take my clothes, lock my stuff up in a lead lined box or some shit. Lock me up. Right at the moment you can’t trust me. I don’t trust myself.”


	7. I'm Not Your Enemy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry and Oliver confront Bobbi in her cell and may bite off more than they can swallow.

Oliver Queen limped into the Cortex without announcing himself, surprising Caitlin, Barry and Cisco having an argument about on line dating. He had a massive cast on his foot, bruises and cuts on every visible surface of his body and a blank cold expression on his face.

Barry jumped to his feet. “Oliver! What the hell! You should be resting!”

“We—as in you and I, Barry—need to have a talk with that…woman. Now,” Queen snapped, then started to limp towards the Pipeline. Barry joined him after a couple of steps, grabbing his arm with artless concern.

“Crutches are too good for you?” Barry asked.

“It’s fine. I’ve had worse.”

“She put a sword through your foot, Oliver.”

“Yes. And you know what? She didn’t break a bone or hit a major blood vessel. That kind of skill? Not even the League of Assassins could teach that. She’s dangerous, Barry.”

They walked in silence for a little while.

“Oliver,” Barry said softly. “I think she really is a good as that. I think she’s been telling us the truth from moment one. You saw her fight Heatwave—he’s no pushover. I’m scared to go toe to toe with him. She took him out like he was a child. I think her world is more…intense then ours.”

Oliver looked at him, considering. “That’s a scary thought, since it seems she brought part of her world with her here.”

When the opened the door to Mockingbird’s cell, they were confronted with…her feet.

She was balanced on the splayed fingers of one hand, her body ram rod straight to her pointed toes. Sweat gleamed on her bare arms and torso, her T-shirt discarded on the floor, just a sports bra across her rather impressive chest. Her body showed an network of new bruises and old scars, nearly as extensive as Oliver’s. She opened her eyes and looked up at them without moving otherwise. “Sorry, headrush is the best way for me to deal with sexual frustration. “

“You’ve only been here a few days,” Barry exclaimed. 

“We have a lot of sex, Hawkeye and I,” she responded. “He shoots till his fingers are raw meat when he’s frustrated so I think my solution is more zen.”

“You’re married to an archer?” Asked Oliver, incredulous.

“Yeah, I know, right? There’s an academic paper in there some where: ‘Convergent Social Evolution in Superhero Family Groups Across Interdimensional Barriers.’ Explains why blond stick fighters date archers in both our universes. ” 

“You’re deflecting,” Oliver responded.

“People say that to me a lot.” She smiled at them, just a shy flash on her lips. In the midst of a flaunting display of power and ability the expression managed to look sweet, winsome, sincere. Once more Barry was confronted with two images of this woman. She was kind and ruthless; smart and stubborn; nurturing and destructive. In his head he’d half-conflated her with his lost mother, for the care she seemed to take for his well being. 

Then he’d watched her coldly decide to kill Oliver and he’d realized nothing was ever as simple as he needed it to be. Not his work, not his job, not his friends and certainly not his love life. 

Mockingbird and Oliver were staring each other down. As the seconds ticked by a genuine grin crept over her mouth and down to her eyes. The tension in the air was unbearable but Oliver placed his free hand over Barry’s and squeezed, hard, warning him not to speak. 

In a gesture that conceded nothing, Mockingbird peeled down to stand on her feet, showing them her back for a moment. Barry could pick out the line of her vertebrae and as she turned every rib, every starkly painted muscle moving under the skin. She looked both womanly and inhuman, as though if they scraped off the layer of flesh they would find a metal exo-skeleton rather than bones. 

Oliver cocked his head at her. “Have you eaten anything? You look like a starved dog.”

“You calling me a bitch, home boy?” She said, laughing.

“Have you?”

Barry shrugged. “We fed her the day she came in and the next day, when she was in the cell.”

“Look in the corner Barry,” Oliver said softly.

A food tray, untouched, congealed to one side. 

She faced off against them, not backing down. “Leave it guys.” Her voice was soft but pregnant with warning.

Barry ignored it. “Why aren’t you eating? You did the first day, a little anyway, and the dinner you made…”

“You wanna do this?” She snapped suddenly. “You want my cards on the table? You don’t get to flinch or pity me if I do tell you, understand?”

“I…yes?” Barry said, uncertainly.

“I was drugged, kidnapped, raped and tortured by an obsessed psychopath for about a week. In times of stress my PTSD manifests as a terrible stutter and/or irrational anger and/or a pseudo eating disorder where I can’t touch food unless I make it myself. Wanna see the two toenails that never grew backed after he ripped them out?” She grinned maniacally as she spat the words, her eyes as dead as a sharks. 

Barry recoiled a half-step from the intensity of her voice, her gaze. Oliver, steady as a rock, just nodded. “It goes like that, sometimes.”

“Yeah, I recognized a hale-fellow-well-met-we’re-all-a-little-broken in your abs, buddy. How do you deal?”

“Work out till I throw up.”

“Oh, I do that too. I was well on my way there now when you two arrived. It’s…it’s better these last six years, since I became an Avenger. Feel a lot safer anyway.” She picked up her discarded T-shirt and toweled at her face. “Any chance I could get a shower before you stick me back in here? A bathroom somewhere with no windows?”

“Yes, actually. They’re old decon showers but the water is hot,” said Barry. He looked at Oliver who nodded. They flanked her as they all walked down a few levels, into the oldest labs in the building. They were still clean and neat, as though the many technicians and scientists who used to work for Star Labs had just stepped out for coffee. 

Bobbi emerge from the shower fairly quickly, her mass of blond hair damp, freshly dressed a new set of clothes Barry had fetched. She was still wearing her personal combat boots, and had her dirty clothes balled up in one hand. Barry pointed in the opposite direction, towards the stairs to the common floor and the kitchen.

“Look, you might as well make yourself something to eat. No sense in you passing out from lack of blood sugar.”

She smiled at him, then looked at Oliver. “You okay with it?”

“Yes. But even if I wasn’t…this is his house. His rules.” Oliver nodded at Barry who blinked in surprise. “Well, she was right about that, Barry. I did come because I was concerned for you guys but part of it was…I didn’t think you could handle her. That was wrong and insulting and I’m sorry I even thought it. You’re the leader in Central City, not me.”

In the kitchen, they moved one of the tables so it blocked the direct line to the door, at her request. Bobbi moved around the kitchen with the same deftness she’d shown the day before, constructing a chopped salad and some slices of toasted pita bread with hummus from the supplies she’d bought. She made extra for Barry and another plate of the pita and hummus for Oliver. They all drank water.

“Look,” she eventually said around a chunk of tomato. “I understand that I’ve managed to totally abrogate any trust you might have had in me. It’s not cool, but I understand it. That being said, nothing I’ve told you about this situation is un-true. I _was used a stalking horse_ to allow something from—well, Asgard I’d say—entry to your universe. Like a remora fish, hooked onto Barry as he crossed the dimensional barriers.” 

She stood up, her food gone, and walked her plates over to the dishwasher, returning with the homey tomato shaped old fashioned kitchen timer in her hand. Playing with it as she spoke, it made mechanical ticking noises, counting down time.

“I don’t think whatever it—who—it was is here on vacation. They’re here with evil intent, I’m sure. And though the Asgardians aren’t _actually_ gods, they might as well be. It’s a kind of power, a kind of tech, a kind of reality you’ve never seen before, either of you. Fundamentally inimical to this universe, I think, which is why they needed help to get across the Bifrost to here.”

The little timer in her hand went off, a tinny buzz. She turned it all the way around, to the thirty minute mark and laid it on the table between Barry and Oliver.

Oliver, irritated, reached out for it…

…and found he couldn’t move. His body was frozen in place. His eyes could blink, and his heart and lungs were working but other than that?

Unable to turn even his head.

“Wa…ter,” slurred Barry, his hands twitching on the table top, then he took stopped moving.

“Yeah,” said Mockingbird, checking both of their vitals. “It’s a combo of muscle relaxant and a synthesized variant of curare that worked to almost kill Steve once. My version doesn’t affect your involuntary muscles though.” She translated. “You’ll be able to breath and have a pulse, you just won’t be able to chase me. I’d guess until the timer goes off for Barry, you speedsters and your wonky metabolisms! Hours and hours for Ollie though. Here.” She placed two vials on the table top, drawing them out of a compartment in the sole of her boot. “That’s the extra formula and the antagonist, as Caitlin will be able to tell you.”

She sighed out loud, then turned both their heads gently till they were looking at her. “I’m really really sorry about this but…I think what ever’s going to happen, it’s going to happen soon. The Asgardian, whomever it is, was trying to take you out of the picture for a reason, Barry. Which means I’m now the next target. And I can’t be in a cell when they come for me. I can’t fight them one on one.”

Mockingbird look sad and tired, but determined. “I know I’ve just destroyed any chance I have that’ll you’ll trust me again but…no matter what happens here?”

She walked away, towards the door, and they couldn’t help but watch her. She looked back, her face calm and set, no longer the damaged creature she’d honestly been in that cell but the Avenger in her ascendant. Both the men knew that feeling, the moment _Barry Allen_ and _Oliver Queen_ went away, leaving only The Flash, The Green Arrow behind their eyes.

“No matter what, _I’m not your enemy._ Despite all appearances to the contrary.”

Her smile flickered across her lips like a guttering candle, Bobbi breaking out of the cover of Mockingbird. 

Then they were both gone, out the door in a flash of white cotton shirt and silent footsteps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may need to write that paper, you know. 
> 
> "Convergent Social Evolution in Superhero Family Groups Across Interdimensional Barriers: A case study in two universes"


	8. What the hell is going on?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, where exactly is Barry going without the team or his costume in the middle of the night?

“How’s Oliver, Cait?” Barry asked into his phone, trudging along a dark street in the bad area of town. He’d walked all the way from Star Labs at normal speed, wanting the time to clear his head. 

“He’s really really mad,” Caitlin Snow responded, sounding distracted. “But he still can’t get up. The antagonist is working just fine but that was a powerful drug. Umm…much more powerful than anything I could make.”

“Yeah, well…I don’t think she was showing off. I think she’s just better than we are. Any sign of her, by the way?”

“Cisco says no, that she took her stuff out of the lock up—hang on” Caitlin put him on speakerphone and Harry and Cisco chimed in now.

“That bloody supercomputer she has stuck a trojan horse in our security system, as soon as she got close to the secured locker it just opened for her,” Cisco shouted from somewhere else in the room, sounded halfway between angry and admiring. “Got that much on the surveillance.”

Harry, on the other, just sounded dryly amused. “She has all of her personal weapons, that remarkable suit, all of it. She put it on—”

“Just stripped down right in front of the camera, looked up at it and waved in her underwear in fact,” Caitlin said, sounding amused. 

“That part was okay,” said Cisco.

“And walked out the front door. Went invisible on the street and … that was that,” Harry finished. 

Barry sighed. “Okay, well, we can start looking for her in the morning.”

“She can’t wear that thing for that long Barry, and she had no where to stay, I bet if you zipped around the city you’d be able spot her eventually,” Cisco remarked.

“Ramone, that'd be a waste of his time,” responded Harry. “Look, she’s been one step ahead of us since minute one. Joe has the CCPD out looking for her—they think she’s a meta so they’ll treat her with respect—and we’ll figure out a way to track that suit at some point. Or she’ll so something publicly and we can nab her then. But, honestly? I’m really not convinced she’s the danger here.”

“I agree,” said Barry, then with a guilty twinge started lying to his team. “I’m going to be out tonight, running down some leads as Barry Allen. Leave me to it if you can, but call if anything turns up. All right?”

They chorused their agreement and Barry hung up the phone. He was nearly at his destination, a small nondescript warehouse on a dead end street. The rusted out door had a new lock on it but the light above it was burned out. He pulled out a key from his pocket and let himself in. He jerked and tripped over the lintel as he passed through the door, cursing softly in the darkness inside and out of space.

“You okay, Flash?” Drawled a voice from the shadows and a single desk lamp clicked on, showing Leonard Snart standing calmly in the center of the room. His cold gun lay on the table next to him but he was in street clothes, same as Barry. In fact, he looked very nice in a collared ice blue shirt and dark pants. 

“Sure, Cold, I’m fine. Just clumsy when I’m not using my powers,” Barry responded, shutting the door. A little exit sign flared on above him, bathing him in warm red light

They stared at each other across about twenty feet of darkness. 

“So…” Barry said, then trailed off.

Snart opened his mouth and closed it again, his usual cool fading into something like discomfort. 

“Len, the bank? What the hell was that?” Barry blurted out, angry and hurt suddenly. “What the hell is going on?”

“Yeah, Barry,” answered a voice. Not Snart. A woman. From behind him. A blade suddenly materialized across the back of his neck and another one, very sharp and very cold, pressed against the skin of his throat. “What the hell is going on?”

Mockingbird appeared at his back, near his right side, her sword blades extended and held just under his chin, ready to scissor closed on a locked pivot of their points, just under his left ear. She had the open sides wrapped in her fist and she could squeeze the cutting edges closed before he could do anything about it. “Don’t try to move. Don’t try to use your powers. I’ve fought speedsters before—these blades are coated with monomolecular diamond. They’ll take your head clean off.”

Snart jerked forward, his mouth open to shout, then stopped, looking at something in to Barry’s right. Mockingbird showed Barry the gun in her hand, then withdrew it back out of his vision.

“Be a good little second string villain and stay over there Snart. I gotta have words with the _hero_ here,” she said, her voice dripping sarcasm into Barry’s ear.

“Mockingbird,” Barry said as calmly as he could. “I thought you weren’t our enemy?”

“If this is what it looks like, _Barry_ then I am definitely your enemy,” she hissed into his ear.

“Oh and what does it look like then?” Snart almost yelled, his cool demeanor suddenly cracking. He turned to the support pillar closest to him and hit another light switch.

A pool of warm, mellow indirect lighting illuminated a cosy scene: dinner table set for two, with cloche covered dishes, a bottle of wine, red and white roses in a vase. Just past the pool of light a king sized bed with crisp sheets and comfy plush coverings in a black lurked invitingly. 

Barry made a little whining noise in his throat. This was not the way he’d wanted anyone to find out about all of this…

“No, really hero-lady what does this _look like_?” Snart said, more calmly.

“Well it looks like a damn…date,” Mockingbird snapped back at him, her voice starting aggressive and trailing off into uncomfortable muttering. “I interrupted a date, this is a date isn’t it ohfuckiamsosorryBarry…”

Barry felt her start to relax and his leg muscle tensed to take him to the other side of the room as soon as she let him go…

Instead, her grip firmed up. “Hold on a second here. Barry. I’m going to ask you a couple questions and I need you to answer honestly. Before you do, realize this: you won’t catch the second or third bullet I fire and he won’t be able to get to his gun before I kill him. So he’s off the hook for your life, Captain Cold.”

Snart quirked an eyebrow at her, looking halfway between furious and intrigued. 

“What questions?” Barry said, trying not to move his throat much. The blades were pricking at his skin still, feeling like razors.

“Is he coercing you?”

“What?” Barry exclaimed. “No!”

She continued, her voice dogged and serious in his ear. “Has he threatened your life? Or the lives of your family, your friends? Sleep with me or I kill them? Date me and I’ll try to go straight? Anything like that at all? Cause if he has it’s still coerced and it’s still rape and I’m still going to fucking kill him, okay?”

“No,” Barry repeated. “Nothing like that. We ran into each other on the street a couple months ago, by accident and it just…happened. It’s totally separate from the hero/rogue stuff, I swear.”

“Okay,” she said but her grip didn’t relax. “Now you, Snart. Same question. Are you being coerced? Date me and I’ll take it easy on you? Date me and I’ll try to turn you into a good guy? Cause that’s coercion too.”

Snart opened his hands into the air. “Nothing like that at all. He’s nauseatingly honorable about the whole thing. Like a real hero.” Len managed to sound cynical and, well, proud at the same time. 

"Last question: where'd you get the net you used on him in the bank? Who gave it to you?"

Snart made a frustrated noise. "My sister, said she stole it from an experimental lab for me. Except after I saw what it did I called her and she wasn't even in the state when I got it. So I don't know!"

Mockingbird’s breath huffed and the blades were suddenly gone from Flash’s neck. He whipped around and stared at her. 

She was standing half in shadows, all but twisting her toe into the ground, her cheeks red. Her entire body language screamed embarrassment. But she looked him in the eye. “I’m really sorry, Barry. I one hundred percent thought you were coming to betray everyone. It made sense that the Asgardian had suborned you. I mean you’re so….nice. It had to be an act. I thought. I’m…I’m sorry,” she repeated, looking down now. “I’m a terrible paranoid person and I should be ashamed and I wrecked your date. I’m really really sorry.”

Barry swallowed hard. “This dosen’t…bother you?” He blurted out.

“Huh? What? That you’re bi—sorry, I saw you looking at my boobs, you like the ladies too, that’s clear—why would that bother me? We just established everyone was a consenting adult—”

“No! That I’m…seeing…one of my…villains!”

“Oh, that!” She exclaimed, looking from him to Snart and back again. “Barry, please. Where I come from…there are a lot of us and we can’t really date civilians, right? Gets them killed PDQ. The superhuman dating pool is pretty much other heros or the people you hit for a living.” She made an expansive gesture to the whole scene. “This isn’t weird. This is a _cliche_.”

Barry shook his head at her. “All right then but don’t—”

“Please. Not my secret to tell, sport. Besides, after today I think I could tell your team that water was wet and no one would believe me,” she said ruefully. “Snart I apologize to you too. It was gauche of me not to do proper recon but I did think Barry here had betrayed your planet into the clutches of a mad alien menace.”

Snart cocked his head at her. “Your world sounds…fun.”

“Yeah, it is. But I think you’re better off here. Smaller pond on this side of the dimensions. Listen, do you mind if I leave? You can salvage some of your night and I can go back on the run and…I need a drink.”

Barry turned and walked slowly over to where Snart was standing, then looked back at her. “You thought I was in league with this Asgardian person?”

“I thought maybe you _were_ the Asgardian. All the suspects could counterfeit your powers and replace you if they needed too. But it’s not you, so…I’m not sure who it is. And it feels like time is running out. Hence, I need a damn drink!”

Snart reached out and laid his hand to the small of Barry’s back and the Flash felt the usual frisson of excitement at his touch. “Saints and Sinners. Two blocks northwest. Warning: it’s where I left Mick.”

“Ah, that’s not a problem. I suspect Heatwave and I will understand each other pretty well.”

“He’s been talking about you. Mostly to the tune of ‘why can’t I find a skirt like that around here?’. It’s almost…sweet,” Snart said, the corner of his mouth quirking. 

Mockingbird smiled at them both. “Have a good night guys. Sorry again.” And then she was gone.

Barry felt Snart’s hand slip down to cup his buttock and squeeze and then he was pulled into a rough embrace. “Whoa, whoa, I’m usually the one moving fast around here, what got into you?” he exclaimed, looking at the older man with a smile.

Snart was staring at the doorway still. “Barry. An amazon warrior from another dimension just threatened to kill me if I was trying to hurt you.” He turned his head and pinned Barry with all the force of his gaze. “Dinner can wait. Get your damn clothes off.”


	9. I can hide behind you if I have to

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy hour at Saints and Sinners never really ends...

Saints and Sinners was half-empty but everyone Mick Rory could hear was talking about the ‘new hero’ in town. They quieted down when they saw him but it started back up again as soon as he was out of what they thought was earshot.

It didn’t even really bother him, that they were talking about him getting a beat down on camera. If anyone tried anything they’d learn plenty fast he was still Heatwave. And that skirt, that Mockingbird? As he’d called herself. That had been something special. He almost felt honored, she’d gone one on one with him.

The door to the bar was kicked open. That happened a lot. The front panel was reinforced and there were stoppers to prevent it from hitting the wall. Still it slammed into the doorstop with a resounding thud.

For a moment, there was nothing there…

…then a body came flying through the air. It was a man, with long hair whipping around his head and a scream on his lips. He landed hard most of the way across the room and slid on his face into the bar, leaving a trail of blood and spit like a snail. He curled into a ball, clutching his face.

The door way framed his catapult-er.

Her.

Blond hair like buried gold on the seedy under lit bar. Dark trench coat and combat boots. Cool, calm expression with a slight quirk to one corner of her mouth.

“Helllllllo lady,” Mick muttered under this breath as the rest of the room went dead silent. A chair at the back scraped and fell over with a bang as at least two tables of hardened criminals exited out the back like little kids hearing an ice cream truck.

Mockingbird looked over at their backs and snorted. “Calm the hell down. I just want a drink.” She politely reached out and closed the door behind her, then stalked past the man she’d thrown. She stopped, turned back and looked down at him. “Next time a lady tells you not to touch her, don’t touch her you dipshit.” 

Mick was at his usual table against the left wall, near the kitchen door, with exit lines in every direction. He was resting back, in fairly deep shadow, his nearly empty beer mug just at the tips of his fingers. His heat gun nestled comfortably against his side. Despite not having once looked in his direction the blond turned and walked straight towards him. 

He put his hand on the grip of his weapon.

Two paces out she stopped, looked at his gun hand under the table, then back up to him. “Chill. I’m not here to fight. I’m hear to drink. Can I sit with you?”

“You buyin’?” He rumbled, but he kicked the other chair out with his foot without waiting for her response. 

She laughed. “Yeah, actually.” A wallet appeared in her hand and flopped onto the table top. It was greasy and cheap but it contained a nice wad of cash…and the ID of the guy now groaning and levering himself to his feet at the face of the bar.

Plucking the money from the folds, Mockingbird picked up the wallet, balled it into a clump and delicately hurled it towards its owner. 

It hit him. On the nose. Which was clearly broken. He screamed and fell down again.

Heatwave started to laugh, a deep rich noise from his belly.

“Are you sure you won’t marry me?” He wheezed when he was done laughing. 

Mockingbird pulled her chair around till her back was against a wall and snorted at him. “Already married, sport.”

“That’s not a no,” he responded, as the waitress inched her way up to them. She looked back and forth between them, her eyes frightened. Mick was used to that. He and Snart scared the shit out of even these lowlifes.

Mockingbird gestured at the wad of cash. “Refill his and bring me an unopened bottle of decent beer. No glass. And seriously, unopened. Or I start breaking more than just that pervert’s face. Take like forty percent off the top for yourself and bring drinks till we leave or the money runs out.”

When the beers arrived (she clipped the cap of hers neatly off against the table edge like it was nothing) he raised his glass to her. “If you can’t drink with friends, drink with enemies.”

“Or you know, sleep with them,” she said in return, watching him carefully as she took a pull from her bottle.

Mick shrugged. “That’s where you came from? Eh, their problem. Not like it’s going to last, right?”

She smiled and took a longer swallow. “It doesn’t bother you? Them…fraternizing like that?”

“Snart…Len…he’s a strange guy. I’ve been friends with him for a lotta years and nothing outside heists seems to make him happy. The kid…the kid kinda does. Let’em have it, while they can.”

She put her bottle down and stuck out her hand. “Mick Rory, I’m Bobbi. Truce for the night at least?”

He shook her hand firmly, liking the strength of her grip, the rough tug of her calluses against his palm. “Seriously though, not interested?”

“Didn’t say I wasn’t interested, sport. Said I was married,” she laughed at him. 

“Dumb heros and your codes of honor,” he muttered. 

They settled into a companionable conversation mostly about forms of violence. She had a fine understanding of the many arts of hurting people, including some he’d never heard of; in return he shared stories of heists that made her laugh.

As the night wore on, he coaxed details of her life on some other world out of her. She spoke of alien invasions, of fighting Nazi holdouts. She talked of her husband, her eyes glowing with both love and lust. She spoke of her teammates with depthless affection and her team leader with fake irritation that reminded Mick of the way Len and Lisa talked about each other.

Eventually, long after the bar should have legally stopped serving them (though she’d only had about three beer in all those hours) they worked their way around to the current situation.

“What bugs me is I know, I fucking know whomever it is, whichever of these Asgardian assholes is responsible for all this they’re sitting there, behind someone’s face and laughing at me. I mean, I thought it was…him, right? And it’s not and maybe it’s not even anyone in the group but it is and…ergh…”

Bobbi trailed off, squinting into the shadows at the other end of the space with an angry look.

Mick snorted. “Well, if I was going to take over someone’s body in that group, it’d be that West girl,” he said idly, pounding the last half of his beer. When he brought the mug down she was staring at him, horrified.

“What?”

“You…I…” she smacked her head into the table top. “If Steve comes here, and you tell him you’re the one who figured that out I swear I will end you, Mick. End you.” Her voice was less threatening than plaintive, if muffled.

“You think I’m right?” He said, carefully. He was possibly drunk and might be misunderstanding her. Even in their brief conversation he was aware she was _much_ smarter than he was, capable of those lightening flashes of sheer brain power he saw from Snart sometimes. 

She raised her head and made a helpless gesture with both hands. “Oh, as soon as you said it I knew it was right. If…um he…isn’t the traitor it’s her. There was one big obvious red flag two days ago and I looked right past it. Fuck me sideways.”

“If you want,” Mick said with a straight face.

She poked her finger at him. “Don’t you start. You think _they_ would be done by now?”

Mick nodded.

“Then come on. They’re still going to be pissed at me and I think I can hide behind you if I have to.”


	10. They're professional scumbags

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Asgardian revealed

Joe West was getting into his car to head to Star Labs when his phone ran. Forever Young the Rod Stewart cover. Barry.

“Bear, what’s up? You didn’t come home last night.”

“Joe, I caught her,” Barry gasped, breathless. “But I need some help. Cause I caught Cold and Heatwave too. And I can’t carry them all.” He gabbled out the address, a warehouse on the edge of the bad part of town.

“I’ll be right there,” Joe exclaimed, then hung up and peeled the vehicle out of his parking spot like a race car driver, wishing he had his squad car.

When he pulled up, the door to the warehouse was open and he could see Barry standing in the middle of a pool of light, in his civilian clothes, one hand wrapped tightly around the upper arm of that woman, Bobbi. She was in her tactical gear, her hands behind her back. She had a livid black eye and blood on her face but she was grinning and talking to Barry with a strange easiness. 

At their feet, Snart and Rory sat, also with their hands behind their backs, looking sullen and miserable. Their guns spilled ridiculously out of a plastic shopping bag at Barry’s side.

“Nice work, buddy,” Joe called out. “I’ll call the uniforms to come clear this up—”

“Oh, you don’t want to do that, Detective,” Bobbi said, laughing. She sounded almost…unhinged. “I go back to Star Labs—as do my new friends here—or the whole damn world finds out who’d under the lightening bolt.”

Joe looked at Barry who shrugged. “Super computer in her pocket,” he said and Joe sighed. It took some chivvying and the occasion ungentle nudge from super fast hands but they got the three prisoners arranged in Joe’s car eventually, Snart and Rory in the back seat, Bobbi shotgun. Barry leaned in the car window and glared at each of them.

“I’m going to circle the car, running, so if any of you pull anything, you’re toast, understand?”

He got a chorus of snarls in return which seemed the best he was going to do. Joe glared around in his turn and then they made their awkward way to Star Labs. 

Barry flashed up ahead and the group was ready for them when they arrived: Harry fully armed and grim faced, Cisco grinning and slapping Barry on the back, Caitlin looking sorrowful. The Arrow was there in full costume and mask, discreetly leaning on Iris’s shoulder instead of a crutch. Iris herself was quiet, her dark eye piercing and stony as they moved from person to person.

They quickly hustled the three prisoners into the lab, setting them up in the cafeteria at Barry’s request. The only time the Flash had let go of Bobbi’s arm was when she was strapped into the car. Once they were in the building he kept a hand somewhere on her again. 

“Kid, I like you too but really?” She said once they were in the cafeteria, seated on three chairs in a row.

“Invisible isn’t immaterial. If I’ve got a hold of you you can disappear all you like, you’re not getting away. I’m thinking about getting a collar and leash,” he snapped at her.

“I kinda like the leash idea,” Mick Rory rumbled, nudging Snart in the arm who actually flashed a hint of a smile.

“Yeah, who’d have thought the Flash was all…kinky,” Snart drawled.

Barry threw him a venomous look.

“All right,” Joe declared. “What were the three of you doing together? You still going to pretend you’re some sort of hero, Mockingbird?” He walked over to loom above the blond woman, though she was so tall it was less intimidating than he’d hoped.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend, Detective West. Since you all don’t like me any more I had to move to the bad side of the tracks.” She cocked her head at Rory and Snart. “They’re scumbags but they’re _professional_ scumbags. I can work with that.”

“Why would you need too?” Caitlin blurted out, wringing her hands in distress. 

The Arrow and Barry had moved to one side of the room, blocking the door together and were having a low conversation, more silences and significant looks than words. They both looked up to hear Bobbi’s answer.

The blond woman shifted uncomfortably, her expression hovering near embarrassed. “The Asgardian is going to play their hand soon, I can…feel it coming. I can’t fight them alone, not here where I have no resources, no back up. The best case scenario was I worked with Team Flash but I fucked that up, didn’t I?”

“And not that I love being anyone’s second best but the price was right so we were willing to do a deal with the lady,” Snart offered, sounding bored. “I guess that deal’s off now. Oh well.”

“I just wanted to stare at her ass,” Rory added.

Cisco laughed, then covered his mouth, looking fearfully around the room. Harry and Joe shot him matching disgusted glares.

Iris watched them all, quiet and calculating. 

Caitlin moved forward, studying Bobbi. “When you say you know this…Asgardian…is going to do something soon…how do you know that?”

Bobbi nodded at her. “You track the weather patterns around here right, because of Mardon? That Weather Wizard guy?”

Caitlin nodded, her hand unconsciously clutching at her shirt. 

“Temperature’s been dropping last few days, right? Unseasonably? Not suddenly like it does when he’s around so you didn’t think _too_ much about it. But enough that you’re getting worried?”

Everyone in the room was looking at them both now, Arrow still by the door, Barry drifting over towards Iris. 

Caitlin, her face pale as milk, nodded again. “Yes. It seemed oddly localized as well, just over Central City. I was going to mention it but things have been kind of…unsettled around here.”

Bobbi grimaced. “My fault again,” she said softly. “I know you have no reason to believe me but I’m so sorry.”

Barry reached Iris and she looked up at him with a soft smile as he rested his hand on her shoulder. She patted his hand with her own and turned to stare at Bobbi intently again.

Barry’s hand…blurred and suddenly Iris was on her feet, screaming and clutching her neck.

Mockingbird catapulted off her seat, her hands—inexplicably free—grabbing Caitlin and shoving her into Harry, tangling up his gun for a moment. Arrow snapped the lock on the main doors to the room.

Snart and Rory both surged to their feet—also no longer restrained—diving across the room for their weapons.

Everyone was shouting but Iris’s high-pitched wail was louder than the rest of them put together. She staggered away from Barry, ripping at her own neck like a crazed cat…and her dark hair was suddenly golden blond.

Bobbi vaulted the table between them and snagged the other woman around the forearms, pulling her hands away from her face.

And the other woman was no longer small and slight but as tall as Mockingbird, slender and graceful yes but much bigger framed.

Mockingbird started to laugh and pulled the other woman’s hands wide apart, then viciously head-butted her in the face.

And now when “Iris” screamed in pain it was in an alien voice, shriller and breathy.

The rest of the room stared at the now two blond women wrestling against the table before Mockingbird twisted her hip and moved her arms and the-woman-who-wasn’t-Iris-West was flat on her back on the top of the furniture, writhing and shrieking.

Mockingbird jumped up to straddle her torso, one hand going to her throat, the other holding her left hand in the air. The woman on the table was now utterly different, a willowy blond with features that were both beautiful and cruel. As Team Flash, the Arrow and the Rogues watched her very clothes changed, melting from Iris’ slacks and shirt to a green and gold bustier with black leggings, a green cloth half-skirt over them. 

“Hi Amora,” the Avenger said with triumphant glee. “Where the _fuck_ did you stash Iris?”


	11. Go to Niflheim you mortal insect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amora's plan revealed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took so long. I've had a very hard month or so, sickness, mental health issues with my dad and one of my dogs has hurt his leg. 
> 
> But I'm back now.

Mockingbird dug her fingers into the other blond woman’s throat. 

“Amora, Enchantress, sweetie. Answer the question. Where is Iris?” 

Team Flash, Arrow and the Rogues stared as a group, still half stunned the way “Iris” had flowed and changed into the tall blond woman being throttled by Mockingbird. 

“I…I didn’t really believe her,” muttered Snart to Rory. 

“Then why are we here?” Rory muttered back.

Captain Cold, uncharacteristically non-plussed, shrugged. “Sounded fun?”

“Go to Niflheim you mortal insect!” Snarled Amora, all but spitting into the Avenger’s face. “What have you done to me?”

Mockingbird released her grip on the Asgardian’s throat, keeping her left wrist prisoned (she was kneeling on Amora’s other hand), and pulled a little vial out of a pocket.

It was filled with a clear liquid with a dark green gel in suspension. As everyone watched a spark of yellow lit it up from the inside.

“I’ve been carrying this around for years, Amora. It was intended for Loki. It’s oil of mistletoe, infused with the closest analogue to the venom of the Midgard Serpent I could synthesize. I intended it to be activated by Thor but lightening is lightening, thank you Flash.”

She shook the vial and yellow light gleamed along the edge of the glass. “There’s a sliver of mistletoe infused with this in the back of your neck, just beside your spine. Not enough to kill you, but enough to rob you of your magic.”

Amora went very still under the Avenger, her eyes wide and mouth open.

Mockingbird grinned down at her. “I wonder what would happen if I made you eat this whole vial?”

The prisoner blanched, her already milky white skin going grey. “Let us not be hasty, warfriend of Thor Odinson.”

“That’s not my title, Enchantress.” Mockingbird leaned down and hissed into Amora’s face, nose to nose. “What’s my title?”

The room around them was dead silent, breathless at the contest of wills between the two big blond women on the table top. Rory didn’t even make the porno joke he was thinking of, though it would later turn out both Cisco and Harry were thinking the same thing.

Amora clenched her teeth together, then ground out. “Lady Barton, High Valkyrie of Midgard, Odinfriend, Handmaiden of the Allmother, Bane of Trolls, Oathsister of Thor Odinson.”

“Right. Thank you, sport,” Mockingbird said with a sarcastic grin. “You forgot the Valkiyre part right? Or didn’t think it would matter here?”

“Bane of Trolls?!” Blurted out Cisco suddenly. Mockingbird looked up at him, her face going sheepish. 

“I punched a cave troll once. It was … complicated.” Then she turned her attention back to Amora.

Before she could speak again, Joe West shook himself free of his frozen shock.

“To hell with all this bullshit! Where’s my daughter?” He howled.

Flash put his hand on his foster father’s arm. “Yeah, Bobbi, where’s Iris? Is she safe? How do we find her?”

“Yes, of course. Answer the question, Enchantress. Where did you stash Iris?” Bobbi hopped off the table, pulling Amora with her and shoving her down into a chair in the middle of the group. She rubbed at her throat, her mouth in a pout.

A sly calculating look settled onto Amora’s face. “The little mortal has some value to you all? So why should I release her to you? That would remove—”

Bobbi punched her in the face.

Amora fell out of her chair, wailing in surprise and pain. Bobbi hauled her up and sat her down again. Her nose was askew, clearly broken and spewing blood. 

Bobbi leaned down into the Asgardian again. “So, yeah, it also weakens you physically, stops you from healing as fast as you normally do and increases your pain reception. Welcome to mortality, Amora.” Bobbi reached out and roughly pulled her broken nose straight, eliciting a scream. “Where’s Iris, Amora?”

Caitlin looked around the room. “Um, are we now okay with torturing people?”

Joe made a frustrated gesture. “She kidnapped my daughter, right now I’m okay with dismembering her.”

Arrow spoke for the first time, his voice slow and deep, covered by that masking he used in public. “Why Iris? Why not Flash? Or you, Mockingbird?”

Mockingbird looked up from Amora and nodded. “Oh, I think she meant to replace me the on the trip here, leaving me to die in the Speed Force.” Amora looked up, pure hate in her eyes and Mockingbird nodded. “Forgot about this, though, right?” She held up her right hand and for just a moment a runic symbol gleamed on its back. “Not even you could smash through Odin’s protections that fast. As to why Iris…well…Amora here is called the Enchantress for a reason. She thinks she’s the goddess of love and desire, not Freya. She chose Iris because to her shallow little mind, Iris was the most beautiful person in the room.”

“When? When did she replace her?” Harry asked. 

“That first day, I’d think. By the second day she’d already laid a trap for the Flash, via the Rogues there.” Mockingbird nodded at Cold and Heatwave, who had been slowly drifting the to perimeter of the room, away from their arch enemies. They both glared when everyone looked at them. “When that didn’t work…Arrow, I think maybe—the level of anxiety you felt over my being in town. Was it maybe a little…exaggerated?”

Arrow hissed under his breath, his fists clenching. 

“So,” Caitlin said slowly, “she was trying to what? Get you and Flash out of the way? Why?”

“Well, I think Flash was the only person who could have hurt her until I hit her with the venom. And I’m the only person who would know what she was trying to do.”

“Oh, pray tell me, you mortal slattern, what have you scried about my plan?” Amora snapped, wiping blood from her face with her sleeve.

Mockingbird laughed. “I’ve seen that net before, Amora. It was in Odin’s Armory. Right next to the plans for the Destroyer. But it doesn't have to be fire, does it?” Mockingbird knelt and patted the Asgardian on the knee. “Fire destroys. Ice … preserves, right?”

Amora stared at her. “You are a witch. Who’s magic have you stolen?”

“It’s not magic, Enchantress. It’s just condensing fact from the vapor of nuance. It’s what I _do_. “

“What the hell does this all mean? And where the hell is Iris?” Joe said, slamming his hand down on the table. Next to him, Barry nodded.

“You need to explain, Mockingbird. Now.” Flash said firmly. Like a leader.

Mockingbird spared him a quick approving glance. “She brought the seed form of an Asgardian Automaton with her, a variant of the one that guards the Allfather’s vault. That one kills with fire. This one is uses ice.”

Mockingbird touched Amora’s chin, forcing her eyes up. “You made a deal with Laufrey, didn’t you. He provided the core for the Ice Destroyer in exchange for what? Odin’s head?”

Her only answer was a blood covered snarl. 

Looking around the room, Mockingbird’s voice grew grave and serious, despite the fantastical things she was saying. “She’s planning to unleash Fimbulwinter on this earth. Freeze every living thing in place, suspended in not-death, with all the inherent power of your lives held in potentia.”

Mockingbird stood up, tall and strong and achingly sincere. Even Mick Rory was hanging on her every word. “She’s planning to use your world like a larder. Drain the life force of every living thing and use it to destroy Odin, Frigga, Sif, probably Loki. To enslave Asgard and Thor Odinson. Her tool is this frozen Destroyer and that needs a power source.”

“Iris,” whispered Barry. And lightening flashed in his eyes. 

“Yes.” Mockingbird nodded. “But I think we can find her, even without Amora’s help and I think I know how to beat her giant toy. We’ll all need to work together though, even the gimmick villains over there.” She nodded at the Rogues.

“Stop calling us that and I’ll think about it,” Snart said with some asperity but he was nodding as he said it.

Rory barked a laugh. “You want my help burning down a giant ice apocalypse robot to save a pretty girl? I’m in!”

“Good.” Mockingbird said firmly. “And I’m glad you stuck around Arrow. I’m going to need your help.”

“With what?”

“We need to steal a fire truck.”


	12. If it comes to it...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plan come together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Terribly sorry about the delay, real life has not been kind lately. I wanted you all to have this shorter than I intended piece rather than nothing.

_”All right sports, let’s go over the plan one more time.”_

_“We’ve been over it three times, why are we—”_

_“Well, if I think Cisco’s paying attention this time and not playing with the firetruck lights then we’re done.”_

*****

Stealing the fire truck turned out to be relatively easy. With the aid of her fragment of Jarvis and some inside info from Joe, Mockingbird and Arrow found a firehall with one of the big pumper trucks that was up for minor repairs. Since Mockingbird’s suit could make her look like anyone she just blithly walked into the place and drove the big rig out. She picked up Arrow a block away and they drove to the planned point together.

“Why did you want me along?” Arrow asked her after a few minutes. “You’re handling this fine on your own."

“Well,” Mockingbird said, glancing over at him, “couple reasons. First off, sorry for trying to kill you.”

Arrow laughed. “I think if you’d been trying to kill me I’d be dead. But thank you. That was a wake up call for me; I suppose I hadn’t considered what the standard was in a place where people like us are common.”

“We have a Norse god on the roster. I’ve boxed him. I might have had an unfair advantage.”

Arrow smiled just a little. “So, I ‘barely make minion’?”

Mockingbird stopped politely at a red light and shook her head. “Sorry. That was…it’s what I do. I make people mad when I fight them. Keeps me alive."

“I saw the scars.”

“Oh, yes, you would understand. Scars aren’t…marks of failure. Every scar is a wound you _survived_.”

“We endure. People like us.”

“Yeah.” Mockingbird looked over at him. “But not Flash. You and I, we’re the blood in the bricks, the bones in the foundation of the bridge. He’s…he’s the fireworks at the dedication. He’s like my Cap, he’s…he _shines_. And I can’t ever hope anything puts out that light. But we walk half in darkness already—”

“If it comes to it—” 

Arrow looked out the window of the firetruck, his deep voice calm and even.

“If you have to kill Iris,” he said, “to stop this monster from destroying the world—I’ll keep Barry and Joe out of your way.”

_*****_

_”How are you going to get that thing to come to you anyway?”_

_“Well, when we strip searched Amora I found this rune tablet and it looks kinda like the control slab I’ve seen Sif use for some artifacts.”_

_“And you can read it?”_

_“Sorta, Snart. Sorta.”_

_“That’s the best we’re going to get? Sorta?”_

_“Look, you just concentrate on not betraying everyone, all right?”_

_*****_

“Cold,” Flash said as he blurred to a stop next to the pair of Rogues, waiting in the shadow of the bridge. It was just the three of them.

“You can call him ‘baby’ if you like,” said Mick in a mild voice, and would have immediately dropped dead if looks could kill.

“Caitlin says the ambient temperature is dropping fast three blocks down. Bobbi thinks the jotun is about to materialize.”

“Barry,” Snart drawled. “You do realize that woman is as utterly ruthless as well…me…right?”

Barry ducked his head like a frustrated horse. He was standing in that pose that made his legs look a million miles long, his feet nearly vibrating from the need to _run_.

Deep in the back of his head, where he kept “Len” carefully walled away, so that he wouldn’t wreck things for Captain Cold by, you know, _caring about stuff_ , Snart felt a wave of sad, hopeless love. 

“Cold,” Barry said with a headshake. “Despite what everyone here thinks I’m not an idiot. It’s just that she’s smarter than I am. Hell, I think she’s smarter than Wells, Caitlin and Cisco too. Evolutionary pressure on her planet must be like being crushed under a mountain.”

“Yeah, I bet, just…just don’t…trust her…too much? All right?” Snart said, his words limping like a gut shot giraffe.

“I didn’t know you cared,” Barry shot back with a grin and was gone in a flash.

Snart couldn’t help himself, he stared at the trail the yellow lightning had burned into his retinas for as long as he could.

“When are you going to just tell the kid, Snart?” Rumbled Mick.

“When hell freezes over,” Snart snapped back.

“So, next couple of minutes?”

*****

_”Run that bit past me again? Arrow and I use the fire hose to spray water at this thing, the Flash uses his speed to make a vortex of water and air and Snart does what?”_

_“He, Harry, uses the cold gun that Cisco has conveniently cranked up to maximum overdrive to freeze the vapor, creating a shell around the jotun destroyer , with an air gap.”_

_“Why won’t it just break the ice?”_

_“It’s not smart. It’ll be confused for a little bit. It will register the wall of ice as being itself and its not capable of harming itself.”_

_“Then you and Caitlin and Cisco?”_

*****

“This stuff is amazing,” Caitlin enthused. “It’s so stable and yet so—”

“Incredibly dangerous?” Cisco remarked, looking at the three scuba tank sized canisters with trepidation.

Bobbi poked her head up from behind a computer. “It’s actually got high tolerances for being bashed around and heated up. It’s a variation on the stuff we use in War Machine’s flamethrower. Just lighter, faster dispersing and more reactive to a specific type of heat.”

“The heat of my gun,” said Mick from one corner.

“Yeah, exactly.” Bobbi grinned at Rory.

“Well you two are getting along,” muttered Joe from where he was sitting, he, Wells and Barry having a low, intense conversation. Snart and Arrow were over on the other side of the Cortex prowling around each other like coyotes, both keeping an ear on the conversation.

“Mock-ingbird,” called Snart in his way, the beats of his words always a little off from what you expected. “Why exactly is it so important I freeze the water vapor before it gets too high?"

Bobbi stepped out into the middle of the room and leaned on the table with the flammable gas, looking at each of them.  
“The length of time it’ll take this ice Destroyer to register the wall as a threat is a guess, but an educated one. We have to fill that air gap between the automaton and the wall with this gas before it breaks free. These things _learn_. We’ll only get one shot at it and the gas has to reach a specific concentration for what we want to happen.”

“What, effect, exactly, are we looking for anyway?” said Arrow in that weird deep voice his equipment gave him. 

“It’s a thing that happens in really intense fires, where the air gets heated in a room past the autoignition temperature of what’s inside. Instead of creeping flames you get a nearly simultaneous ignition of every flammable material. It’s called—”

“Flashover,” supplied Heatwave without looking up. But he was watching them all from the corner of his eye, something almost like a smile on his face. 

Bobbi pointed at him. “Exactly. And thematically appropriate!”

“How can you joke about this stuff?” snapped Harry.

“Because this is my life, Doctor Wells. Gotta find levity somewhere. You guys’ll get there. Eventually.”

The computer warning noise sounded. Caitlin studied her screen intently. 

 

“Ambient temperature drop exactly where you tried for, Bobbi.”

The Avenger, respectfully, looked at Flash. They all looked at Flash.

Barry pulled his cowl up and set his shoulders.

“All right folks, let’s go. We’ll run through the plan one more time when we get there.”

“Avengers Assemble,” Bobbi said, wistfully.

Now everyone looked at her. 

“What? It’s our catchphrase. We say it in a big huddle before every mission.”

“You have catchphrases for superhero teams?” Cisco shook his head. “Your world is so _weird_.”

Everyone stood up, started gathering equipment, weapons, the necessities of sallying forth to kill a mechanical frost giant.

“You guys must have one too?” Bobbi said to Cisco, near the back of the group as they filtered out in clumps.

“Nah.”

“Come on? What about ‘run, Barry, real fast?”


	13. Technically, He's Cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ice Destroyer!

Mockingbird stood on the roof of a low rise apartment under construction, her hand to her tactical goggles. She was trying to track the way the temperature in the area was dropping. From what she could see, the ice Destroyer was moving through the deserted industrial area to the south. Amora had been telling that much truth, anyway.

It was headed straight for the rune tablet that she’d laid out in the construction site, dug in one level below the street. The rest of Team FlashBird—as Cisco had named them—was stationed at various points around that site.

Her hair blew back from her forehead and a long lean man in red leather was standing next to her. He smiled, bright and open and achingly pretty. Despite everything, his smile made her want to laugh.

 _Kid could be another Steve, if he wanted._ She kept that thought to herself. Bad idea to TELL a superpowered demagogue what they were if they didn’t know it already. 

“How are you planning to get down from here? I’m going to be a little tied up, same as Arrow,” Flash asked her. 

Bobbi flared her jacket. “Glide suit. I once jumped off the top of Avengers tower, like ninety floors. It’ll be fine at four.”

Flash quirked his head. “You’ve had a life, haven’t you? I mean you say stuff like that without explaining it, without pretense. I think you’re a great liar—I know you are—but you’re not lying about all that.”

Mockingbird’s Jarvis fragment flashed an ‘incoming target’ alert into the corner of her eye, but she took a moment to consider his words. “I’m living that life, Flash. Like you are. And maybe yours’ll get as crazy as mine. If it does, Barry—” 

She stepped to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Barry if it does, remember two things: the only thing you can’t trade for your heart’s desire is your heart.(1) And the things in this world that are worth dying for? Love, freedom, family, loyalty? Those are also the things worth living for. When you find them, grab’em and hold on.”

Barry’s eyes slid down and away, towards two figures advancing slowly out from under a pedestrian bridge. 

“Yeah, even him. He’s an asshole but he’s smart and sharp and holy shit is he hot.”

They both laughed.

“Technically, he’s Cold,” Barry snickered.

“A+ banter, sport. You’re definitely cut out for this life.”

Without warning, a cloud of what looked like fog whipped around the corner of a building and began trundling into the construction site. At its core, a faint doubled shadow lurched: like a hollow, opaque figurine with a smaller form suspended inside it.

“Iris,” gasped Flash and he was gone in a burst of wind and lightning. 

Mockingbird breathed out and her breath misted in front of her. Ice began to form on nearby surfaces.

Through the shared audio link, Snart said plaintively: “Must we kill it? This is the nicest weather we’ve had in months.”

 _”That thing is using my daughter as a battery you—”_ Joe snarled before Caitlin cut his radio.

“All right, Arrow, Harry, you’re up,” Mockingbird said.

In the open ground below, the Ice Destroyer had almost reached the tablet, its form starting to bend down to grab. As it slowed, and the fog dissipated, they could see it looked like a marionette made of shifting slabs of cloudy glass, blue and glittering. Its head rose up just above the lip of the site, perhaps thirty feet tall.

From either side, Harry Wells and the Green Arrow leapt to their feet and pointed fire hoses. Cisco had cleverly modified the pressure on them so one strong man could handle and manipulate each hose.

Water sprayed into the air, forming snow and ice crystals as it hit the aura of uncanny cold surrounding the Destroyer.

The creature reared back to its full height, registering the attack.

Yellow lightening blurred around it, pulling the water into a vortex, like a reverse funnel, building up and up from the ground. Mockingbird’s goggles slowed the action down enough that she could see him, the Flash, looking like a god of speed and power, every muscle moving like poetry.

“Run, Barry,” she whispered. “Run.”

The wall of water rose up and up in the wake of the speedster running for his beloved sister’s life. 

And passed the point of no return.

“Snart, now!” Four people yelled the command: Mockingbird in midair, Flash from his cyclone, Cisco and Joe West from the ground.

Captain Cold unfolded from the top of the construction cabin and pointed his cold gun at the artificial blizzard.

Blue-white light flared, too bright to look at and in a flash the wall of water became a cone of ice with a jagged, closed top.

Mockingbird hit the ground at the end of her jump glide, mere feet from the ice. Inside she could see the tall form of the Destroyer raise its fists.

She leapt forward, her sword blades snapping out from her combat batons, piercing the ice without cracking it, spinning away to be replaced by a panting, gasping Caitlin Snow. Then again, and Cisco Ramone staggering up. A third time on the far side and now she snagged the perfectly shaped nozzle of the canister on her back, jammed it into the hole she’d made and released the catch on the gas tank strapped to her back.

Heatwave lumbered up, moving incredibly fast for his size. Mockingbird released the tank to thud to the ground and tapped her goggles. One hand went up, palm out, directed at him.

_Hold. Hold. Hold._

The Jarvis-fragment’s stilted voice sounded in all their ears. 

_Concentration 100%_

Mockingbird caught Cisco and Caitlin sprinting in opposite directions out of the corner of her eye. She was watching the form of the Destroyer, its fists arcing forward within its prison to smash the ice to splinters.

Heatwave shoved her to the side, replaced the tank nozzle with his heat gun barrel and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Then an inferno bloomed white, fire so hot it flashed the ice around it to superheated steam in a breath. Mockingbird found herself on top of Mick, covering them both with her fire proof jacket.

They had to watch it later, the recording of the Flash hitting supersonic speed at the lip of the construction site and flying like bullet into the center of the Ice Destroyer. 

But they felt the impact of the sound wave like a mailed fist, punching the breath from both of them. Somehow, Mockingbird rolled free, dragged the super kevlar fabric off her head and staggered to her feet.

In the ringing ache of noiseless noise caused by the sonic boom—only the ear plugs Wells had provided preventing them all from being deaf permanently—Mockingbird saw the Flash on the far side of the construction site, Joe West at his side.

In the Flash’s arms Iris West lay cold and still, her beautiful skin ashy and lifeless. 

As she somehow limped towards them—after a few steps a strong arm wrapped around her waist and Heatwave was helping her—she saw the Flash rip his emblem off his chest and lay in on Iris’ bare skin, where he’d torn her sodden shirt partially open. 

He raised his hand above it and electricity flared on his fist.

Like a doctor in an emergency ward, he snapped his hand down.

In his arms, Iris jerked…

…and flailed up, coughing and gasping. 

Alive.

Mockingbird felt okay falling to her knees then and concentrating on breathing herself.

Around them, the remnants of the Ice Destroyer melted and evaporated, gone as though it had never been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) Not my line. Paraphrased from _Memory_ by Lois McMaster Bujold


	14. Avengers, Assemble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And, _fin_

Cisco eyed the pattern Mockingbird had drawn on the floor of the big empty storage chamber with suspicion. 

“I hate this magic stuff,” he muttered to no one in particular. 

“So you’ve said,” responded Caitlin idly from where she was monitoring the drugged-into-unconsciousness Amora’s vitals. 

“Repeatedly,” added Harry Wells, watching a detailed scan and replay of the last moments of the Destroyer for the millionth time on a tablet. 

“I was just engulfed by a magical ice demon-thing for days, I’m with you Cisco,” said Iris. She was in a wheel chair, still too drained to walk on her own. Barry and Joe were fighting over who got to push her around most of the time. 

From the back of the room, where she, Arrow, Snart and Rory were casually lobbing verbal barbs at each other, Mockingbird called out. “It’s not magic Cisco. It’s just science you can’t grok yet.”

“Do _you_ grok it?” He snapped back.

“No, but damn it Jim I’m a biochemist, not a quantum physicist.”

“For that reference, I forgive you.”

Suddenly, Mockingbird’s phone made a strange sound, like a building whine. 

“And hello there Tony Stark,” she said, looking down at the text message. “All right folks, confirmation. Bifrost is now stable on their end and Heimdal is working to open the path here. I get to go home, boys and girls.”

A short sharp cheer sounded around the room. Mockingbird gathered up her jacket and personal items.

“Before you go, can you tell me, please, how did you realize she—” Iris pointed at Amora—”had taken my place?”

Mockingbird nodded at Arrow. “When he showed, I said his real name out loud. The Iris in the room didn't even twitch. ”

“Yeah?” Said Joe. “And?”

“Iris doesn't know his identity,” Mockingbird said.

There was a collective pause around the room from Team Flash.

“Well, fuck,” said Caitlin primly. “We’re stupid.”

Mockingbird pointed at Heatwave. “And technically I didn’t figure it out. He did.”

Heatwave threw her an incredulous look. Behind his back, Captain Cold looked shocked, then oddly proud.

“Well, never thought you’d fess up to that,” Heatwave rumbled.

“Don’t thank me. It doesn't help you, them knowing you’re smart,” Mockingbird laughed, then stepped forward and hugged Rory. She turned and shook hands with Snart, pulling him in suddenly and muttering into his ear. He very slowly smiled at her.

“You…said that…already,” he drawled. 

“Across the divide of the universe, sport. I swear it.”

Snart laughed at her, but his eyes strayed to Barry’s and he nodded just a little.

She had turned to Arrow when the runes she’d drawn on the floor started to glow.

The air filled with light and motion, as though the molecules of the room had suddenly started to spin on a different axis.

And three men stood where no one had been a moment ago.

The man on the left was the smallest of the three and he was still taller than Flash, his arms and chest looking carved from marble under his black and purple body suit. He had a strung bow at full tension in his grip.

The man on the right was huge, a massive hulking creature of armor and metal and leather. In his hand was a blocky war hammer, glowing symbols fading as he lowered it from above his head.

In the middle stood a man in red, white and blue, a star-centered round shield on one arm, a cowl mask over the top of his head. Even in total stillness there was an arrested dignity to him, something that caught and held the eye in his stern and beautiful face.

All three of them went into fighting stances as soon as the weird light around them faded. The menace in the air was nearly visible. These were the three biggest dogs in the room. Possibly in the world.

Team Flash and Rogues stopped breathing as one.

And a woman screamed “Incoming!” From the back of the room.

The archer released the tension on his string, dropped his arrow to clatter to the ground and hurled his bow straight up into the air.

A flying blond female hit him in the torso, legs wrapping around his waist, her mouth descending on his without pause. Impressively, the man barely staggered as Mockingbird assaulted him though he did bend backward from the force of the hit. The man with the shield casually reached out his free hand and braced the archer’s back so that he didn’t fall; the man with the hammer caught the descending bow in his free fist.

Exactly like they’d done it before a million times.

The archer and Mockingbird spent an improbably long time kissing with an intensity that made the people watching first embarrassed, then physically uncomfortable. 

The words “cold shower” appeared on several sets of lips.

In a gesture that humanized him, the man with the shield rolled his eyes gently.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his deep voice sincere, “they always do this.”

Mockingbird drew back her head and craned her neck around the room. “Um, yeah, sorry folks. This is Hawkeye, my husband. Killjoy there is Captain America. And Thor Odinson, God of Thunder over at the anchor position.” She reluctantly unfolded her legs to stand on her own, keeping as much of her body pressed to the man’s as possible. “Cap, Thor, Clint, this is Team Flash and the Rogues. We beat up a Destroyer and stopped Amora from destroying two worlds. No biggie.”

 

*****

“Holy. Shit,” Flash said to Mockingbird. “Does he know?”

Mockingbird shook her head. “Nope. I mean, a little. He knows he’s known for being inspiring. But as far as anyone can tell he’s got no idea he could ask people to leap into an active volcano and they’d all book flights to Hawaii the next second.”

Flash shook his head. “That’s a hell of a responsibility.”

She nodded. “I know. He’s…he’s literally unique. I don’t think someone like him will ever come around again.”

They both watched as Captain America gently disengaged himself from Iris, who kept staring at him like a love sick puppy, and moved to speak gravely to Leonard Snart, the last person left. 

Within a few sentences Snart’s habitual sneer had turned into a faintly amazed, slightly chagrined hangdog look. 

Across the other side of the space Hawkeye and Arrow were having an animated conversation about archery that no one else in the room could parse. 

Thor had stationed himself over Amora, watching her suspiciously, but still managing to laugh and joke with Cisco in a loud, boisterous voice. 

Mockingbird studied her teammates for a moment longer. “I think you’re right about evolutionary pressure in my universe. Clint’s not considered that big where I come from and he looks like the Hulk here.”

Flash nodded, then leaned into her. “Hey, I know this is all been weird and tough and difficult but…thank you. Thank you for sticking around and doing what was needed.”

“You would have figured it out, Flash. You’ve got a good team here.”

“Yeah, we would have. But people—Iris—would have died.” He smiled, as bright and beautiful as Captain America himself, and stuck out his hand. “You’re Team Flash now, as far as I’m concerned.”

She shook it firmly. “And Avengers Assemble yourself, sport.”

They laughed together, as friends.

“Verily, my lady Barton, if all is well with our comrades here, I am anxious to return the Enchantress to her prison before she wakes,” called Thor. He hoisted the unconscious Asgardian onto his shoulder as he spoke. 

Captain America clasped Captain Cold on the arm, then looked at Mockingbird and nodded. “Agreed. Being this far from home makes me nervous. Let’s move out.”

Snart had a stunned and almost childlike expression on his face when he moved away.

Hawkeye and Arrow paused and glared at the rest of the people, then grumpily separated. Mockingbird stepped forward to join the other Avengers inside the runes on the floor. She looked around at each .

“Thank you for sheltering me. And I’m sorry for the mistakes I managed to make with you all.”

“I forgive you for trying to kill me,” Arrow said coolly. But his lips were just at the edge of a smile. 

Mockingbird cursed at him.

“You did what?” Snapped Captain America.

“It was her fault!” Mockingbird yelled, pointing at Amora.

“Shhh,’ muttered Hawkeye, cuddling her into his hip. “Home and strenuous, athletic sex first; scolding from Cap later.” 

Mockingbird wrapped her arms around him, then laughed. “So, back to normal then?” Hawkeye kissed her forehead. 

Flash pulled his cowl down and stepped forward. “Thanks for helping us save the world, Mockingbird. Come visit sometime.”

“Flash, it was my pleasure.” Mockingbird raised her hand in salute.

The universe vibrated to an unheard music and the Avengers were gone.

Cisco sighed, stuck his hand in his pocket and yelled.

“What?” Snapped Harry, rounding on him.

“She…she forgot something,” Cisco exclaimed, pulling Mockingbird’s phone out of his pocket.

On the front were the words _Text messaging is so convenient, right?_


End file.
